I must say.. it wasn't as hard as I expected it to be. I only ran into one problem, and that was disconnecting the damn fuel line. My first tool didn't work (plastic) so I had to make a run to Napa, and they had a metal which worked perfectly.

I finally got the heads off right before it was time for our hobby shop to close. I was doing the install by myself and I'm a first timer so I think that 6 and 1/2 hours was making good time. Head bolts were the majority of my time.

Tomorrow I clean up the block, and install the rest of my goodies.

Wish me Luck!

 

Why did headerbolts take up most of your time?

 

Stupid me forgot all about the air compressor and impact gun at the hobby shop. So I ended up breaking them with the breaker bar, and removing them all with the ratchet...

 

he means the head bolts fyi jmx not the header bolts.

 

OOPS.. sorry about the typo.. Yea, it was the head bolts that took quite a bit of time..

 

good luck with the project

 

Ah, head bolts makes more sense. I pretty much always do it by hand, no air tools here Just another reason to swap to ARP studs!

 

studs sound good but do arp make head bolts that are reuseable????

 

Heh, have fun scraping and cleaning that block, it's a bitch and then some.

Make sure u clean the bolt holes REAL good, you don't want to do this whole job again
-Steve

 

Yep.. Today was day 2 of the install, and I spent the first 3 hours making sure that all the headbolt holes were clean. Cleaning the surface of the head gasket remains were pretty easy ( a razor and fine wire brush did the trick) along with some brake cleaner. The block looks like new.

Removing that pulley was the killer today. I actually bent the rod on the first three armed pulley, but then I got a pretty decent one from Napa and it did the trick?

Getting the old cam out was a piece of cake. So was installing the new one. It only took about 15 mins to line up the dots on the cam gear and crank gear. That is where day 2 ended. Tomorrow I hope to have the entire thing back together and running.

Overall this has been a rather straight forward install. THANKS to JMX and his excellent write up .

Will post final results tomorrow.

 

I have a question about the coolant that is still in the block? I bought new Prestone Dex Cool coolant today. I noticed that there is still coolant in the block.

I plan to install the sensor for my water temp guage in the plug that underneath the starter. Will pulling that plug drain the remainder of the coolant of out the system? If not, how do I go about doing this?

 

ARP head bolts are reusable. Don't make the mistake of getting the head studs, unless you want to pull your motor to change heads. I made that mistake!

 

You don't have to pull the motor to change heads when you have the studs. I can actually do it with the headers still on the car!