Attacking the "BEAST"

[mazingo]

My friends I finally started the tear down to change my leaking intake gasket. Let me tell you something, whom ever designed that engine never had to work on one . You need to have the hands of a pixie and the strength of a giant, not to mention be made of rubber and have Xray vision.

There is one bolt, the one that fastens the heater pipe ( from the water inlet to the rubber hose on the drivers side) to the cylinder head, it is a bitch to get off. Then if you do not have a 10 mm crows foot you wil have to use a wrench to get two of the four end bolts out of the lower manifold.

I have removed the manifolds and cleaned my engine surfaces tonight. I plan to clean the intakes tomorrow and put it back together. I believe that it could be done in one good day but I wanted to take my time, plus I didn't get started till 1pm.

I noticed that on both ends of the intake gaskets at the water ports, both sides, the gasket was cracked behind the rubber sealing material. It looks as if they were over tightened. I am sure that the dex-cool had something to do with them splitting too.

Now on the new gaskets I bought from CarQuest there are two metal inserts in the area of the water ports. I take it that these are to prevent over tightening the gasket. Smart .

I plan to post a link to some pictures I have of the Dex-cool GOO in my engine.

[tractorboy]

I guess thats why there are mechanics. ...and Mac tools...etc

I thought at first you were going to say something about removing the engine mount or taking off the power steering pump ( the holes in the pully)

some ppl suggest tightening the lower manifold bolts outward.

[mazingo]

Yeah glad I am or used to be a mechanic for guess who CHEVY but I decided I did not want to do that for ever.

You do have to remove the motor support plate to get the power steering pump off, you could probably just take out the front bolt but I took off the whole plate. It gives you room to get to the bottom bolt in the pump.

Well let's PUT IT BACK TOGETHER!!!!

[mazingo]

Finished it yesterday, so far no signs of any leaks. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Certainly not worth paying $600 to have done.