I have the upper/lower, intake, and valve cover gaskets in my cart at rovers north. After Mikes service list, rotella use, flushes, and very clean oil at changes, I'm just curious to see how it looks under the valve covers. I figure I'd replace the ignition coils while I'm at it, plugs and wires are new. Anything else you guys recommend I look at, replace while I'm in there? The head gaskets are new and I'm not having any problems at the moment. Any suggestions for cleaning the manifold and intake inside and out?

 

clean out / replace PVC in the vc

 

X2 on that, pix of the oil separator.

Arrange to have a gauge to test fuel pressure, because the test port will be easily reached during the work.

Consider every hard plastic coolant line as being made from glass, very easy to damage, and anything they attach to like radiator nipple. Under the hood in the nest of vipers you can inflict damage just by poking around.

When removing VC, there will be small spacers that may fall out, they keep you from crushing the gasket with over tightening.

Good time to reverse flush the heater core, there is no on/off valve, it has flow always when engine running.

The oil galley drains in the heads can always use a probe with a rod, wire, or small caliber gun cleaning brush. If gunked, it keeps oil pooled in the valve covers longer than it should, and oil pan gets empty, oil light comes on at speed.

 

It would also be a good time to change the throttle body heater plate. It is cheap ($20) and easy to change if you have the intake system off.

 

X2 on that, if you shop around might find prices vary, as does the functionality of on-line retailer web sites. A certain one in the frozen North now blocks my use because I don't have their favorite web browser and my version of Microsoft won't let me upgrade to it and my Firefox didn't like it either. So this week I ordered from two other sites instead. You are selling car parts to DIY mechanics. How many of them are also IT professionals? Hijack and rant over.

 

Buzz, you posted MY picture I showed you of MY dirty oil separator lol

Thanks for the other tips and I will pick up the throttle body heater plate. A buddy told me aluminum wheel cleaner works magic on the aluminum engine parts to clean them up. Any experience with that? Or other methods?

 

high heat black wrinkle

 

re: Buzz, you posted MY picture I showed you of MY dirty oil separator

It was such a good example of what can go wrong, I went out and bought a new one. Mine was broken in half.

 

Glad I could help. You know what's funny, the picture only shows the half of the sludge that stayed on the separator. A lot of it fell off while I was removing it!