Most liked posts in thread: So, Today This Happened.....

That's the plan.....we have a car show this weekend then after that I may pull the head. I'm thinking I could go ahead and have the head redone, new valves, hardened seats and so on, then when I rebuild the engine the head is already done. Or, I have another stock head I could just swap on to replace the smoky one.....it that turns out to be the issue. We'll see.

 

It's not hard to make them dry with the quality and variety of sealers available today. Plus clean parts and good gaskets do the trick. Now 10K later I'll bet some of the seals will have had it, but all you can do is clean things up and put new ones in again.

 

It already ran in the test stand, but it will be fun to hear it in the car and see it moving again....

 

Well, it's a start....

VID 20220113 121155 - YouTube

also, my buddy made me a plus sized cup holder....

 

We have liftoff!

I drove it around the block today - it starts, shifts, stops (slowly - I need to bleed the brakes!) and does everything it's supposed to including rattles, squeaks and buzzes!

I completely forgot to look at the speedo to see how it compares now that I have the tall diff ratio in it....something for tomorrow's test run.

If I get the brakes bled I'll try and get a short video when I drive it tomorrow.

I had a thought about the wobble in the steering - I wonder if it was caused by the duff diff? Maybe I'll get to find out tomorrow on my test drive, assuming I get to. We have a weather front moving in hard.....

 

Well, as it turns out I needed the $90 pipe after all as the end was broken off, which is why the 0-ring came out.....apparently this is a common problem - the plastic gets old and brittle and breaks. There are a number of You Tube vids showing replacement of this pipe for the exact reasons mine broke.





Of course, you can find this pipe all over the interwebz for $23-25 shipped!

This pic is everything I've had to remove so far......I may have to take the intake manifold off in order to see if the broken pieces of the end of the pipe are still in the opening on the water pump, and to fish those out before I can put it all back together.

 

Well, like any job it's not "hard", you just have to take off a shit ton of stuff to get to it.....I see the parts all over the interwebz for far less than I paid at the dealership, and I'd be willing to bet they all come from the exact same source/manufacturer....also, it's a job you'll only do once in your ownership of the car.

There are a bunch of YouTube vids on all of these repairs, but the best ones I found were from a place called A1 Auto

 

OK, so......all back together and it starts, runs, idles and most importantly - doesn't leak!

Tomorrow I'll take it for a drive, double check that it's full of water, then run it down the road some. If the heater works properly and it's still not leaking I'll call it good.

 

Just home from my test run, it actually was closer to 100 miles and there were no issues, so I'm good to go......CoTA here I come!

 

The oil leaks were annoying me so much I decided to pull the motor back out and see if I can fix them. I used new gaskets and sealer (on one side) when I put it together but the leaks were persistent, so I bought some "right stuff" from Permatex to see if that would do better - this stuff is highly rated but it's just RTV in a cheese whiz can to me.




Took it all apart, all the gaskets looked fine to me. cleaned everything thoroughly, put the cheese whiz on both sides of the new gaskets and put it all back together again. I poured about half of the oil back in and put a white paper towel under it....if it's still clean in the AM I'll put it back in the car - if not - I may shoot it!

 

I think you can buy it in squeeze tubes or short caulk gun type tubes too, and it's way less expensive......