I finally got the remaining exhaust bolts off the heads last night and removed the heater boxes as well as the heat exchangers. Still amazed by the Kroil Penetrating Oil I got off Aircooled.net I did not have trouble with one damned bolt. OK, so some of you have used penetrating oil in the past, but I haven’t, so I’m still amazed. I have to take a picture of some of these little acorn-type balls that I found all over the car. They were even in the heat exhangers. On the left side HE’s, they were burnt to charcoal. Got a better look at the cylinders as well and I have decided they definitely will be replaced. There’s just too much rust and gunk in there for them to be reliable again. Plus, I already have a new set of 85.5’s, so I’ll just use those. I’m still getting prices on a shortblock as I don’t really have the talent, nor the space to learn right now, to build my own shortblock.
The 3&4 head came off last night, and what a mess. There must have been some kind of leak between the cylinder head and the cylinder itself as it looked like an oily mess all over the head. I imagine this lack of a seal was causing some of my compression problems on cyl3, but I’m not sure that the rings didn’t have anything to do with it either. I guess I’ll start getting the new cylinders ready — coat them with a light coat of POR engine paint. It worked really nice on the exhaust. Dried to a nice thin flat black. I also am trying to decide whether or not I should just take all the tin somewhere for media blasting or if I should just use my rust removal attachment on a drill. I guess I’ll start with that and see how it goes. The exhaust itself looks to be in good shape except for the surface rust, so I’ll re-use that. I’ll have to do a total cleaning job on the heater boxes though. It appears that an oil leak just covered them with oil, which then got covered with dirt and grime, more oil, more grime, etc. The right one weighted half as much as the left one. Guess I’ll take it down to the local self-service car wash and see if I can degrease it, then take it apart.