It was. It looked brand new still.

 

I reused my oil pan gasket, water pump gaskets, front timing cover gasket. They had less than a 100 miles on them and looked brand new after tear down.

 

Yeah, I have all new of that stuff. I wasn't reusing stuff with 144k miles on it lol.

 

Also turns out Manton allows you to order to the thousand... I thought it was to the nearest .005".

So I just ordered the Manton 11/32" x 0.120" Wall 7.572" Length Hardened Pushrods. Yay. Getting closer to getting this thing back together.

 

[QUOTE=JakeFusion™;17803290]



Jake,

Were did you get that tensioner? Sorry if you have already said and I missed it.

 

Katech. I changed the bolts out for Zinc plated cuz one of the supplied bolts snapped off in the block. That was fun to remove.

 

Holy hell. Did you let THEM know that?

 

holy pushrods batman!!

 

No. I think there was oil in there (of course there was) and when I went to torque them. Snap city. I chased them clean and all was well. Though, I just went hand tight and then a little more on the new ones. They aren't really doing anything but holding the damper in place.

Still those were Grade 8.8 bolts. 18 ft-lbs shouldn't snap an 8.8 even with oil in the threads. Unless that gave me a false torque reading? Although now that I think about it, I didn't go back in and blow out any metal flakes from the old bolt (I was able to grab it with pliers and I just slowly worked it back out and with it came some super fine metal shavings I had on my fingers and I saw on the top of the timing set that I cleaned off). Though I didn't notice much else. Hmm. Now I might go pulling off the front cover I just installed and blow it out. Dammit. Though to be honest, I don't know what good blowing it out will do. It was so fine it just stained my fingers gray. Maybe that won't destroy the bearings. LOL FUCKFUCKFUCK.

Anyway. About that front cover. I just got it reinstalled. I actually didn't need to grind it (or maybe I did and I just was able to get the cover to sit perfectly) with the double roller. But I used the SacCityCorvette AlignIt Tool and if you press it all the way in and the cover isn't aligned perfectly... it's not coming out. So, after 3-4 tries getting the bottom bolts in first and moving the cover around, I was able to torque everything down and remove the tool and install the new GM crank seal. All with a little RTV Black in the bottom where the front cover, oil pan, and block all meet in a love triangle that requires Black RTV.

Tool sitting in it's little home:


Everything buttoned up with my screwed up crank snout. It sits there. Mocking me.


BTW, getting the old crank seal out was a giant PITA. It was so old and decrepit. And I guess there's a tool for removing it? But I'm tired of buying tools for one off jobs. So, I used a hammer and a flat head screw driver and destroyed it. That's right. I got frustrated. I decided to just beat the snot out of this crappy thing.

But oh wait. It gets better. THEN I found I left the carcass in place as shown below (with the new seal as a reference). It made the same sound as metal when I hit it with my screwdriver. I thought I had some funky *** front cover. But, no. It was like the main piece of the old seal. I decided if I destroyed the front cover to remove it, all would be worth it.

Luckily, one giant blow right on that removed it clean. A little B-12 to clean out the goo and it was ready to go.

 

Tony Mamo is the man. I ordered them through him and they were shipped today. One day turnaround on a custom set of Mantons.

 

Think ill be avoiding KrAck tech stuff.

 

It could have just been a bad bolt. It happens. It is a discontinued GM part, so Katech is the only place to get it and it didn't cause any major issues.

I just hope the Zinc plating is fine for an area covered in oil? I've seen a lot of oil pan bolts and the like that are zinc plated, so I figure it's okay. Usually, zinc plating provides higher torque values for a given grade of bolt.

 

I have zinc bolts everywhere lol

 

Okay. I pulled the gas tank out today. Why? Well, for one, it took 45 mins to pull it out. Took about 30 mins to put it back in. I already had my axle dropped because I was replacing the suspension and needed the room for the Kooks duals.

I also needed to replace the pump with the Racetronix pump. So, out the tank came.

Here is the tank on the floor of my garage.



And the axle out of the way.


The Racetronix went in without much of a hitch (they forgot one of the clamps for the fuel venturi). Took a break for dinner and to pick up that part. Here it is in it's new home with the upgraded wiring harness.



Came back and installed the tank and one of the strap bolts came loose while I was reaching for the other strap. I thought I had tightened it into the frame/body/whatever, but it's a blind bolt when you're on your back holding up the tank. And I was using my impact on low to get it started. I thought it caught, but a face full of road grime later, and an hour of searching, and I never did find that strap bolt after it shot out of there. I was able to get the other in place and all the hoses hooked back up, so I don't want to take the one good one out to take to Home Depot. Does anyone know the thread size? I assume M10x1.5 but wanted to verify.

I'll probably just pick up a few different sizes and try.

 

Well well well... looky what the UPS man brought...

 

And no box with pushrods...

 

That's tomorrow. Lol

 

One head is on and torqued down. I sprayed the deck down with B-12 and the heads. Wiped them clean and sprayed B-12 in all the bolt holes in the head to spray any grime or metal flakes out. I then installed the Cometics on as clean a block as I could get it. I sprayed it with copper spray to help with the seal. I did the 30-50-70-70-ft-lbs retorque pass on the M11 ARP bolts and 22ft-lbs on the M8s in GM sequence. ARP moly lube on the threads and washers.

After a meeting and lunch I'll do the other one. Then the pushrods should be here this afternoon, and I'll get the valvetrain finalized tonight. I plan on putting the motor back in the car this weekend. So I'll get the PCV cover and ATI damper installed tomorrow and the longblock will be ready to go. And once it's all together, I'll use some engine degreaser to clean it up the block before throwing it back in the car.

 

I'm curious why TEA ground off the triangle casting marks adjacent to the spark plug holes...?

 

I have no idea. It looks like **** tho.