Hey, Merry Christmas guys!!!!!
Sorry, theres not much new going on with the truck at the moment. Right now I'm on winter vacation in Phoenix, I AM SO JEALOUS OF THE WINTER WEATHER HERE!!!!! Its about 74 degrees out and I'M LOVING IT!!
. After the timing chain broke, I towed the truck up to my grandparents house and thats where it'll sit for a while.
Hmmm, I tried to pull the foul play card on the guy at the time, but he said that because I saw it run when he pulled it out, any suspicions of it are null and void (not sure how this works, but whatever). I guess since the guy has done a lot of favors for me in the past with my last car, I didn't feel right about accusing him.
As far as my intentions of taking it in, that was a misnomer; I didn't actually have a "Tune up" done. The hot air transfer tube from the intake manifold to the header wasn't screwed in properly and I didn't have enough strength to bend the steel pipe back in myself (on the header side). Also, I despise carb work, (even though he didn't do anything to it, he "recommended" it be rebuilt). I told him to hold off on that. Also, I had them check the brakes, the tranny fluid, the alignment (the guy who runs the alignment computers wasn't working that day, so I couldn't get it done), etc. Apparently the rear brakes were so far out of adjustment, they weren't even reaching the drum!
. So no wonder the guy said I needed new front brake pads while the rear looked nearly new. This also explains why I spun around on dry pavement when I slammed on the brakes to avoid an elk (stupid things are EVERYWHERE in Estes).
They said that the tranny fluid was the consistency of mud. I don't think the lady that owned the Luv truck before me did any maintainance work on it at all!!!
So, they siphoned the old fluid out and ran their special oil injection machine through it. They showed me a sample and it was gross (it was pure black and had chunks in it). I don't think I could have done that myself either with out their special equipment.
The last thing they did (and sorta the first) took several hours for some reason (although they only charged me for half and hour on it
). Getting that stupid hot air transfer tube bent right so it would thread straight took 2 guys; one to unscrew the pipe on the intake side and hold it tight, and another to bend the header side back into shape. Haha, the guy asked me what I did to it, I guess I had trouble getting the header off initially. I unscrewed the pipe, but I couldn't pull it out of the hole so I pulled on the header until I got if off the studs in the head. Afterwards I was able to pull it out, lol.
Ugh, oh well. I got to drive it about 150 miles or so after the rebuild. I was about to change the oil, but ya ur right, a little MMO wouldn't have hurt any....
I ran a can of Seafoam through it, and even put a little of it in the oil. Do you think that could have affected the viscosity of the engine oil negatively? The chain broke maybe 30 miles after adding it to the oil.....
I think your right about the moisture thing though, I didn't even think about it...
Well, I won't be working on the truck for a little while; I can't really get to it (right before we left Colorado a couple days ago we got buried with over a foot of snow; no way I'll be getting the truck out before April....
), I don't have any money left to spend on it (I added up the total cost of it a couple days ago; I've spent over $1600 on it since September!!! Thats about twice as much as I was expecting!
) , and luckily my parents are gonna let me use the Saturn until summer (haha, sucks for my sis
).
So I guess this concludes this cylinder head rebuild thread. Thanks for all of your help everyone!!!!!
I definitely couldn't have gotten this far with out ya!
When I can get to the LUV again, I'll start another thread about replacing the timing chain.
Oh well, thanks again guys!
,Brian
Oh!! P.S. - Larphead, you mentioned I'll need a valve job in the future? Why would that be? I just got the seats reground and everything, do you think that maybe the pistons might have struck the valves or something? Unfortunately I did crank it over a few times after it broke (it will definitely need to be timed again), but I didn't hear anything grind or get struck. It just turned over freely real fast (no compression). Just wondering if you could explain this a bit... Thanks.