Head Gasket Trouble - Pull Engine

Thanks guys

Ripped out the rear end of my RAM so I'm driving my mother's little yota tacoma. Fan clutch was out in it (250g's on the odo) sounds like a swamp boat at friggin idle, more like an airplane when driving off. Drives pretty dang good for this many miles though

Anyways, replaced the clutch today and she drives and sounds like a Cadillac now.

Guess how much the friggin fan clutch was for the yota?

$90...

That's half the price of a good aftermarket electric fan for our stang's.... Another reason I love my Fox

Next step was piping the air delivery system. Finally getting close and starting to have some fun. With the new intake and TB the power pipe angles were off. They raised a good inch at least. You change one single part(heads in my case) and they require stud mount roller rockers, now the valve covers don't fit, taller valve covers require a spacer to raise the upper intake. And that's just one effect. So much goes into planning an engine and its counter parts. Learned this slowly and painfully as I watched my empty pockets burn holes in themselves...

On to power pipe modification. I mocked up the pipe and drew a line. Made sure my pipe was angled the way it would install so the pipe would mate up to the super ok. Used a grinder with cutting wheel to make my cuts. Not the best but made due with tools at hand.





Here you can see the slight angle on the cut. The TB is an inch higher so the angle was different. The TB is longer and upper intake I'm sure helped this too but the pipe ended up being too long which is the reason I took so much off. Forgot to take a before pic.




Cut was pretty rough so I used my die grinder and leftover sanding wheels from head porting kit to smooth out the edges.





The casting here could have been smoothed out but I wouldn't have been able to reach all the way down the pipe with my tools so it stays for now.






It's not perfect but I had some wiggle room with the sleeves. I would like to end up with an Anderson power pipe system some day. So this will work for now.









It should work . Got the lower accordian like feed tubing from air filter installed. Vacume line connected to bypass valve. I mentioned before I removed thermactor system so not of that ugly mess to deal with.

Been thinking about that air filter delivery pipe to super. I think I may build my own out of PVC. I have seen it done before. Anything should be better than that flow restricting accordion flex pipe...

I got her all back together. Had a huge scare. Never worked with aluminum heads or aftermarket roller rockers on studs before. Setting valve lash seemed easy enough after doing a few weeks of research on it. But I tell ya doing it and reading about it are two different things. I followed so many people's advice to use the twist the push rod until you feel resistance method but that just didn't work for me.

I ended up tightening the rockers down after zero lash(didn't feel resistance early enough) and the valves were open constant. So when I went to start engine it sounded like I had no compression and I thought I F'd up the engine rebuild somewhere along the way. You have to remember I rebuilt this engine completely on my own with no prior experience. I just internet researched everything and used common sense. So I thought I really screwed up...

Then I called my cousin and we figured out it wàs the rockers. The method that worked for me was to run the bolt down just to where there was no more play left between the roller and valve tip. That is zero lash. Then I made my 180° turn on the wrench and tightened the set screw. Boom she fired right up as soon as I turned the key.

Following the firing order helped too. Took a little practice but I got it down, figured it out.




There is more on this fan later, I have replaced it, but I want my documentation in order. I got this fan when I was having overheating issues. I slowly replaced every component of the stock cooling system. I started by flushing the system. Replaced the water pump. Replaced the lines. Then I bought this fan. Took me a while to get the wiring right. The fan had several issues from the start, dam circuits kept going bad. Proform replaced the thermostat like 3 times. Then they replaced the whole fan. That one had a main board failure. They sent me a main board and finally, after 7 months of dealing with a sporadic fan it was working as it was supposed to.

So, I reinstalled the fan and the new radiator I bought just before I blew head gaskets the last time. That radiator was the issue I'm pretty sure. Once it was installed it stayed cool. But the fan was acting up and I had already done damage before the radiator could save the head gaskets.

Pro-form 2800 cfm






All back together. Sure is a lot of $hit on that engine...




I set timing to 10° initial like vortech recommends with my blower. I then proceeded to set advanced to about 31-32°.

That's great advice Mike. I replaced this fan and the new one has a much larger fan shroud on it so it forced me to put the stinger up close to the upper rad hose inlet. I actually researched the location because I thought it would be a problem up there but soon found out that was the "recommended" location

I don't know how some of the guys do it but I haven't had the time to post everything right away so I am way behind in getting my pics and documentation on here. Having said this, I will be posting several things in the very near future that some will hopefully enjoy and maybe even be able to use. Basically it's me screwing up and fixing my mistakes...

I will never forget that sinking feeling in my stomach when I turned the key and the engine rolled over sounding like nothing but a starter turning. I really didn't even think the engine was turning. That's what it sounds like when you have your roller rockers over-tightened which holds the valves open constantly.

I was compression-less.

But, I will also never forget that feeling of the engine turning over, firing right up, and then pulling her out of the garage and down the road. Your first engine rebuild. Success.

Can't see it here but the car has a thick layer of dust all over it.


So it ran good. Real good for my taste. I couldn't believe how good actually. No issues, felt hungry for speed. All those months of research and hard work were paying off.

But, like all good things come to an end, it was only a test drive. Back to work.

Time to inspect and button everything up. First I looked under the car for any leaks, NONE! Then I checked my headers again. They surprisingly stayed tight, checked every bolt and they were all snugged up nicely. Looked everything over and closed the hood. Time to sleep!

So over the next couple of days I couldn't get those rockers out of my head. When my cousin came over and helped me fix them up it was late at night, I had been working for 3 days straight over the weekend to try and finish this up. Literally crack of dawn to midnight or later. Motivation can kill sometimes... Anyways we were working on his knowledge of setting lash, some of it he was trying to remember as it had been a while for him. I had this burning thought that I didn't get them all perfect, one or two of the rockers maybe didn't get exactly a proper zero lash and a perfect 1/2 turn after for final setting. So I started researching them again.

I found all the knowledge I needed and went to work. I wanted them to be as close to perfect as I could get them, I wasn't about to ruin all this work and money! I tore off the upper intake and valve covers and set out to reset all of them again. This time I grabbed some cardboard and a marker to keep track of the valves as I went through firing order.

While I had everything apart again I also did more research on the pushrods I chose. I was really concerned about everyone who commented on the length I ended up with for my new heads. Again, I figured I did something wrong again.

You can see here, camera angle wasn't great, but the roller looks to be awful close to the edge of the valve stem.




But after all the learning I did I think I found enough to back the idea that while we would like the rollers to be perfect, the geometry of the valvetrain is the key. So I stuck to my original plan and kept the 6.100" pushrods. I think the design of the heads might have something to do with this. In the end, we shall see how long they last and how well they perform. So long as the bastards to break on me for now I think I can sleep at night knowing the lash and rockers are set properly and all the same.


A few pics for eye candy.











This is my temporary fix for my tailpipe. I removed the thermactor system which involved removing the hard line that connected to the back of the heads and flowed to the tailpipe. I'm not sure if Flowmaster included the connection but there is a small piece of pipe the the long piece connected to with a metal hose clamp(a very thick tough clamp that took some work to get it removed). This is my old water pump bypass hose with a brass threaded plug I had lying around. I used a couple of regular hose clamps to hold the plug in and the other to hold it onto the short piece of pipe welded into the tailpipe. It will do for now until I can weld a more permanent cap in place.

So I had an issue with the clutch cable. It was stretched I'm assuming. Might even be original clutch cable. Everything else on this car was original. I also figured out that white plastic retainer on my firewall is NOT a firewall adjuster. Whatever.

You know, this thang.




So this was my temporary fix until my new MM clutch cable, pedal quadrant, and firewall adjuster arrived.

Before:

You can see there is no more threads left to tighten the fork back.



After:

I found an aluminum bushing and few washers to fill the space. Best piece was the bushing as it fit perfect into the pivot socket in the fork.





But geeze, it's been working for a while now. I wonder how long it will last? I have the new MM kit but it's going to be a while before I want to tackle this if I don't have to...

Ok yeah I know, redneck fix...

That would suck. I be slam shifting all the way home lol.

So my old clutch was a centerpiece dual friction. It replaced the original factory clutch. PO installed it years ago. I just replaced it with an Exedy 400. I wonder if the centerpiece was thicker because I wouldn't have expected a cable on a worn clutch, adjusted fine, to be stretched so far that a new clutch didn't work at all. Check out the threads on my pic of fixed cable. You can see how far back the nuts sat for the old clutch. Crazy.

Ha-ha . Dam spellcheck. I meant centerforce, not centerpiece.