Captain Obvious

What did it taste like? "Sure glad I didn't step in it!"

Nope. They all looked like arse. The only one that stood out from the rest was an exhaust valve from a different cylinder. That one looked like bent arse. Of course, there's no telling if my PO swapped the pistons around. Based on the fact that the "45" piston is in the bore marked "4", I don't think so, but at this point, who knows!!

Absolutely possible. Sometimes the interior lining deteriorates and acts like a check valve. Sometimes a steel mount will rust and effectively expand inward constricting the hose. Not saying that's what happened to yours, but it does happen. Although I actually consider it more likely that the questionable floating cylinder design was getting stuck on the backing plate.

You guys are the best. Stinky Wizzleteats would be pleased. Glad to know I'm in good company!!

I found the numbers on the block. Here's where the "34" pistons live. I got five of these: And I got one of these. This is where the "45" piston lives: I haven't measured the bores to try to figure out a correlation between the actual numbers and the measurements. It's another of those, "because then I would know" issues. The "STD" piston lives in one of the number three marked cylinders. I have no doubt it's aftermarket installed by my PO, but I don't know why. No idea what happened that necessitated replacement of one piston. But I do know that the block wasn't bored.

Welcome to the spindle pin club. These people who build spindle pin pullers and think that's the answer... Now you know the truth.

Nice. I don't think you're happy enough.

Haha!! It always does, my friend!!

https://www.classiczcars.com/articles/interior/a-pillar-cracked-plastic-trim-fix-r71/ I think I did two pairs... You want to buy my spare pair?

Cutting through the pins at the small gap between the control arm and the knuckle is SOP. Just make sure he has enough gap for the saw blade width and doesn't damage either the arm or the knuckle. Good luck. And remember that it's a rite of passage.

Beautiful work on the gaskets. Must be nice to have access to a laser cutter!!

Haha!!!

Yeah, it's just glued on from the heat and the petrified old gasoline. Razor knife works well since you don't have to worry about ruining the old diaphragm. Don't bend the disks. If you can't seem to get them apart and are worried about bending a disk, you can drop the whole thing into a sealed cup of carb cleaner. For a week.

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Yes you need that little metal disk. In fact, there are disks on both sides of the diaphragm. You are supposed to just pry the disks off your old diaphragms and move them over to the new ones. Are you saying that you don't have them at all? Or are you saying that your disks are glued onto your old diaphragms so tightly that you didn't know they came off?

So I'm still waiting for alignment dowels and head gasket to get here. In the meantime, I spent a little time cleaning up the header surfaces where they mate with the head. My PO put on a 6 to 2 header of unknown origin. No idea where he got it. So I'm looking it over and see huge welding goobers inside the tubes and pieces of MIG wire stuck in there from where the guy who welded it got the wire stuck and burned off pieces of it. Here's the worst. About an inch of wire stuck in there: I pried it up with a screwdriver: And pulled it out with a pair of pliers: And there are other testaments to the workmanship, like this huge goober. It was on the upper side, so I used a little mirror to get a good pic. I stuffed a paper towel down the pipe a little and tried to pry it loose. No joy. I'm leaving it in there: So today's question(s) is... What welder has so little pride in his work that he'll leave junk like that in there? Is it just me? Are my expectations too high?

The EFI system is supposed to run clean. Other than the plug color, do you have any reason to believe you're running too lean? Were you pinging? Is ten miles enough to really get a good plug read?

My understanding is that the PCV valve is a metering device. It's not a wide open leak. And if you're not running any sort of air flow meter and are getting all your loading info from a MAP sensor, then I'm not sure it matters.

Cool. As it should be. I wonder if he saw this thread? It's a nice car. It just isn't original paint.

So since you're running a throttle cable instead of the design, are you gonna knock off those two bearing towers for the original linkage rod?

Like this: Note that the square-ish wheel hub is hanging free between those two support bars. The axle is usually not in there real tight. Doesn't take a lot of force.

Woof. That's never fun. That's why I let Greg do the under dash investigation.

Actually I'm pretty sure those threads are stock from the factory. First off, they are straight and not at some screwed up angle, so I doubt that my PO did it. And second, that same hole is threaded on my F54 block, and I don't think that engine has ever been apart until I did it. And interestingly enough, the water jacket hole at the rear of both blocks on the same (left) side is threaded as well. That's exactly what I was thinking, and actually, why I asked. I've been looking into head gaskets and the 83 gasket uses a smaller hole there than the previous versions. I was thinking I could run a restrictor plug into that threaded hole.

Yeah, they all are. Good luck with that. Yes it's been repainted. With little regard to overspray.