I've gotten one head off, and in the process discovered a trick that I haven't seen posted anywhere. It is pretty obvious, but worth mentioning.

After you take the water pump off, feed a 5/16" OD (or less) soft plastic tube down the passage in the block and siphon out as much as you can. There will be no water running in bolt holes or bores when you lift the head.

When using Comic gaskets and GM headbolts, how do you retorque after a 24 hr settling period???

Where do you find a wiper arm puller??

 

no idea about yrou questions but nice tip....

 

TTT for YA

 

Ha Ha, I knew someone would ask this question eventually. I was taking my cowl off and needed to get the wiper arms off. It is a pain but to make it easier pick up the smallest battery terminal puller you can find. It will work on the pass side arm perfectly. The driver side one is tricky because there's barely any clearance if you still have the hood on. You may have to cut some of the handle off the battery terminal puller if the hood is left on.

Rob

 

Thanks! The GM manual of course has a J-xxxx tool, but I figured that would be hard to get and expensive.

 

I've always used the old siphon trick, just never thought about posting it. It makes things alot cleaner when you pull the heads.

 

I thought it was pretty obvious and was surprised it hadn't been mentioned

There are lots of posts/howtos talking about rolled up paper towels and such, so apparently no very many have "discovered" yet.

 

I have always used a vacuum to get what I could and then rolled up paper towels to get the last of the coolant out.

 

I just pull the water pump and use a wet vac to pull the antifreeze out of the heads.Makes it very clean when you pull the heads.
I would not suggest factory head bolts with Cometics.Cometics need to be torque'd and retorque'd a few times to fully compress them.I had to torque them 4 times on a car to get them to fully seat.(with studs).My car,I did it twice and they leaked after 500 miles.

 

I don't have a wet vac
Thanks very much for that. I was thinking Cometic to get the squish down, but it looks like my pistons are 10 out of the block and the GM MLS gaskets are 50 thou before compression, so I think it will work fine.

 

GREAT TIP. I was wondering what would keep the coolant from going everywere.

 

Or you could just drop one of the brass drain plugs on the side of the block..... drains them completely....

 

I had read that and planned to do that, but discovered I couldn't get at the plugs without removing accessories.

 

True... They are kinda hard to get too. I'm used to working on the motors when all the accessories are off, so it's just second nature to pop those plugs out. Does a great job of draining the block.

I've hear the shop-vac method on the water pump works well too, just haven't tried it yet