As the gasket kit arrived it was time to get this show on the road

1st up build a shelter 7 to 8 days of rain forecast






Garage end is screwed in the house above the garage - just an extra repair job

With that out of the way I drained the coolant - after 2.5 years it was time and I wanted to get rid of the dexcool anyway for simpler logistics it is hard to find dexcool in the back end of nowhere green is easy

I then flushed with water just to have a solid starting point no crud and good water flow out of the hoses

Then the fun part I started removing all the bits required to get the intake plenum off, I have secondary air so there are some extras.
The nuts that hold the SAI tubes on are pretty brutal to access, so a bit of reading indicated you can gently move the drivers side bracket to get clearance - and bonus you can which means I can deal with those once the heads are off and they are easy to access.

So far other than having to ask about the coil pack bolts it has been going well.

With luck tomorrow evening I can get the intake off, and possibly get started on the exhaust manifolds. I have done that passenger side and both Y pipe gaskets were done this year so I am not expecting any problems there.

 

I like that shelter idea. Maybe some variant for camping later?

 

Be careful taking the SAI off the exhaust manifold, I mangled one of the corrugated pipes. Also, pick up some M8 bolts and watch the video from AB

 

Good luck!

 

Cool shelter!
When the patio umbrella on the roof doesn't cut the heat for me...I tie a tarp to the house, mower, and another vehicle, lol
I can get the D2 in the garage when it's cold, just no room to remove or install engine.
Here's my rigging, lol
I like yours better.
Looks like if you hung another tarp off the back, and had a big space heater, you could stay pretty warm.

 

Update Arp Studs (ARP PART # 157-4301) arrived current torque for the studs is :

1. 25 ft-lbs
2. 50 ft-lbs
3. 70 ft-lbs

Just for info, the ARP data sheet was updated in 2016

 

The fun continues

1st point SAI sucks to work around pipe, brackets and other stuff makes thing much harder.

But once the intake was finally off I found a literal mouse/rats nest



SAI pipes at rear of intake plenum

Passenger side bracket


If you have secondary air removing the intake plenum is much harder than it should be :

• The rear bolts for the coil pack bracket are tough to get, a long small 1/4 extension works well there
• Once those are clear remove the bracket for the SAI pipes it will give you a bit more wiggle room - 2 10 mm nuts
• If you can remove the SAI pipes and bracket life is good 27mm and 18 mm wrench - mine were not budging
• Bad news the heater core hardline also attaches the to passenger side of the Intake Plenum a bolt in rather than stud would make things easier

In my case the pipes were not coming out easily so after some cursing I used this method not ideal but it works

1. Gently move the driver side bracket to the left the pipes will bend enough for you to do this you just need to clear the studs
2. Lift the plenum from the drivers side as best you can and support with some wood or plastic shims
3. Now lift and move the plenum to the left you are looking to get the plenum off the locating pins
4. 2 people would make this easier

If the heater core pipe was anchored behind the SAI brack this would have been easy as you could move that bracket out the way the same as the left side. I may well reassemble that way with a washer to balance the bracket mounting


You can just see the end of the stud for the SAI bracket that is all you need

 

Thanks for posting all this. Totally can empathize with the SAI insanity. I had to deal with all this when replacing the valley gasket this summer and ended up eating nearly half a day just trying to remove those soft-ish lines coming off the exhaust manifolds. Ridiculous design.

Anyway, seeing as how I have the literal exact same symptoms as you, I'm curious to see how this all resolves. Actually, one difference between our two trucks is that I don't have the milkshake you mentioned in another thread yesterday(?). Still not there yet. But I'm definitely losing a ton of coolant, at about the same rate as you, 1/2 per 2 hours, and also see it coming out of the overflow line. I use BMW blue coolant, which dries very bright blue, making it obvious whenever/wherever a leak exists. Nice feature. Anyway, the hoses and frame directly beneath the overflow tube are caked in bright blue schmoo. I still don't understand what causes that particular situation. If you have light to shed on that, I'd love to hear it.

 

@Brandon318 yea over pressure is tough there are really only 3 causes

1. Bad rad cap generally that either does not allow pressure to build and you get high temps and basically boil over - or the other case does not allow pressure to vent and you get blown hoses etc
2. Blown head gasket or the bogeyman cracked block, usually as a head gasket just starts to go you get over pressure but not necessarily milkshake unit the damage processes further - if you drive a good distance every day you may not see any as it gets burnt off at least until it gets bad
3. A blockage somewhere causing overpressure - but that is pretty uncommon in my experience. But if you have badly maintained vehicle that has tons of stop leak tossed in to it it could happen

I went through the whole denial thing on the gasket issue.

I thing to check is if any shop you trust can to an exhaust gas test for you, the shop machines are generally better than the ones we can rent. That is the best indicator.

 

Yeah, I'm thinking its a head gasket the more I read your posts and others. Corroborated easily by the fact that the PO never had it replaced and the truck currently lies at 169,000 miles - a supernatural length of time for a HG not to have blown. And the PO wasn't exactly great with maintenance either. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it has to be honest.