May 9, 2003

Caught my dad’s cold on vacation, so I haven’t done much on the car lately except stress out about how in the hell I’m going to drop the engine to change the heads. I know people have done this a million times, but it will be my first time doing it. I ended up tearing down most of the $50 engine over the last weekend in April. That was way cool. Found out the metal around the spark plug holes had major cracks around them reaching to the valve seats. Along with that, cylinders three and four had lots of pitting on the top of the cylinder. I have no idea what that means happened, but I’d gather that the engine was not terribly well cared for. The oil was blacker than any I’d seen and the sludge on the drain plate was pretty thick. I haven’t cracked the case yet because I need to figure out how to get the gland nut off the torque converter plate on the crank. I’m going to try the “two screw” trick on the fan on the other side. Just ordered another floor jack from Sears, this one goes up to 21″ so it should be high enough to get the back end of the car high enough to drop the engine. I guess it’s just something I shouldn’t think too much about and should just do it. Once that’s done, I think it’s just the brakes I have to do and she should be running after that, hopefully ready for inspection & registration. Hope to get to some of that this weekend.