The phone jerked me from my slumber at the ungodly hour of 7am. Work again, this time a sales guy who needs some help with understanding the product, platform and tools.
After I get him squared away, I spend some time with my bride before she leaves for work. The sun is out and it’s beautiful in the backyard. Once she heads out, I hang up the basket of clothes, make the bed, take the plants back outside, vacuum the rugand wash,dry, and put away the dishes. Basically I do everything I consider useful in the house till it is warmer in the shop.
To be fair, I do like the house to be clean and tidy. I also don’t want my bride to feel like she needs to clean when she gets home. It’s all done and we can relax for the rest of the weekend.
I make myself a seriously good omelette and also some bacon for 21. She is awake and Haas chills with her and I finally head to the shop.
I check the shop for any animals that may have taken advantage of the open door in the past 4 days. I’m in luck, nothing has mad themselves at home. I turn on restoration garage on mirror trend tv as background noise, and get to work on the truck. I have been dreading working under the truck, but grab some tools and get to it.
First things first, I tackle one of the possible worst jobs, removing the manifold to pipe bolts for both sides of the exhaust. I spent a lot of money on a 1/2 inch electric impact wrench. It is a special tool from Rigid that has a massive 600lbs of torque. With that, a deep impact socket and a short extension I attack the rusty exhaust nuts. To my surprise and joy all 6 of them come off without a struggle. Why again was I putting this off?
After removing both exhaust manifolds i remove the passenger side head. Working fro the rear at the bottom. The first bolt o remove starts squirting antifreeze out. I replace the bolt and move the oil pan underneath. Apparently it isn’t necessary for oil. I slow the flow by holding the bolt partially in the hole until it is fully drained. After removing the remaining bolts the head comes off but I can’t remove it because of a couple of ground wires. Although the lock nut is hard to remove, it is definitely not on tight and I can feel both ground wire moving freely. This totally explains the electrical issues I was having. I Amit make sure they are absolutely tight when they go back on.
On the drivers side head, I remove the last rocker arms and manage to drop the last nut directly into the open exhaust pipe, I can hear it roll after it hits the elbow at the bottom of the down pipe. I am going to have to figure something out to retrieve it as the telescopic magnet failed.
I assume the block is drained of antifreeze at leas to below head level, so I remove the same back lower bolt from this side. You know what they say about assuming. The fluid actually knocks the bolt out of my cold hands and the stream goes directly into the damn open exhaust pipe. Doh!
I use my badass impact wrench to remove the rest of the head bolts. And the second head is off the engine. All the cylinders look smooth, so I am still assuming the issue is a spun bearing.
At this point I take a quick break to clean a space for, and install a Kurig coffee machine on top of my toolbox. It had some issues with leaking coffee grounds but I am just using it to boil water. I have an ancient plastic jar of Folgers decaf instant coffee and some Splenda. It is still colder than the balls on a brass monkey. The hot beverage is a little slice of heaven.
Now I can feel my fingers again, I get under the truck and remove the bolts to the torque converter cover and remove one of the two large support rods that go from the bell housing to the motor mounts. The other is tricky to get to and will have to wait another day. There are two other bell housing bolts I need to remove from underneath.
Back on top, I use a 2×4 to sit on while I remove the top bell housing bolts. Even with the heads off these are a total b!tch to get to.
After installing a lift chain with two head bolts, I decide to call it a night. Tomorrow I will take some pain killers since my ribs are already hurting from the weird positions I have been in most of the day. I still need to remove the lower bolts one support rod and the torque converter bolts. I should be able to extract the engine after that.
Tomorrow should be a good day.
