Restoring Rusty

[LSX408]

Nice progress! Love the updates with pics.

[rusty76]

Making progress!

[green72s]

Thanks for all your efforts to document this process so well, with descriptions, humor, and photos. This will be handy for my son and I one day.

[y5mgisi]

X2. I enjoy following this thread.

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by LSX408

Nice progress! Love the updates with pics.

thank you, figure I'm taking pics anyway so I document how the bits go back on, might as well share em, maybe help somebody out, I'm no expert, learning as I go

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by green72s

Thanks for all your efforts to document this process so well, with descriptions, humor, and photos. This will be handy for my son and I one day.

you're welcome, hope to see your and your son's build pics real soon!

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by y5mgisi

X2. I enjoy following this thread.

thank your, your feedback motivates me to keep going

[Gregski]

well my day started out with cleaning and spinning my wheels

first I removed the hard fuel line to get better access to things

[Gregski]

then I took some more pics of the old OEM intake manifold realizing I done never flipped it on it's back to take a pic of it's there belly

now if you look close you might could just see how the EGR port is all carbon dipossited shut right there in the middle of it, completely shut to the point of ineffectiveness

[Gregski]

so here are some before and after pics of the cleaned lifter valley (wish they turned out better - my garage faces West and the sun shines right on my back and cast shadows over the engine bay, poor me a river! right)

[Gregski]

again nothing to write home about but for now it will do (the plan is to come into some aluminuminum heads come fall - complements of the Curse Jar, hee hee)

[Gregski]

figure one more point of view of this gutter since it's not like we can admire it none once it's all sealed up

[Gregski]

ok this is what we are working for, out with the old and in with the new

(the old manifold being the one on the left, LOL)

[68post]

You did an excellent job of crud removal !! That wasn't easy I know. Kudos

[Gregski]

I want to point out something to you that I learned

the new aluminum intake manifold is thinner than the old one, at the pint where the bolts go one is 1/16 of an inch thicker if not a bit more

also I am not planning on putting on the bracket back on so I noticed that those bolts were an inch and a quarter and the other ones were inch and an eighth

also some of the bolts don't screw all the way in

the two that surprised me were the bolt above the #4 exhaust port (third bolt in the passenger side head) it interferes with the exhaust push rod

and the bolt above the #5 intake port (fourth bolt in the driver side head) it inteferes with the intake push rod

[Gregski]

now maybe with the gasket and a prayer these components would never meet, but that was a chance I was not willing to take, so I picked up some shorter 3/8th grade 5 bolts, only one inch long and some washers to remedy this situation, I used these in these two places plus on all the outer corners as those bolts bottom out (blind I guess it is called)

[68post]

Excellent info , and something to watch for doing swaps !

[Gregski]

so first a dry fit, just to see if the holes align and what the gaps are like

[Gregski]

at this point it was getting late, I was cold and hungry, but there was no way I was going to stop here

so we will be using another FelPro gasket (but not all the pieces just the blue sides, per Weiands instructions we are NOT to use the middle pieces)

I could not find any gasket adhesive maybe I was looking for the wrong stuff, I imagined it would be in an aerosole spray can, anyway I needed some stick-to-it-avness so I just gently coated the heads with RTV silicone

then I ran a 1/4 inch beed of RTV down the middle as per the instructions

I used carb cleaner to clean all the grease off of all the maiting surfaces (AutoZone was all sold out of Brake cleaner, can you believe that that's like an Irish bar running out of booze)

[Gregski]

torqued all 12 bolts in the super special sequence using a torque wrench first to 10 ft lfbs then to 15 and finally to 25 ft lbs

only one bolt gave me trouble to torque to spec that pesky third bolt from the front on the passenger side, the intake stack is perfectly in the way on that side, it seems to be set more to that side than the driver's side, oh well I eye balled it in the end

and the money shot

[Gregski]

at this point I hit a Mechanics High, I had to keep going I had to see the carb on there tonight...

so first the studs went in...

then the split down the middle carb base gasket...

then the crown jewel... the Holley Carburetor

[Gregski]

still far from being done with this phase, got to put the dizzy back, connect the vacuum hoses, thermostat, coolant hoses, throttle linkage, even a bit of electrical to do ~ but it's so rewarding at this point!

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by 68post

You did an excellent job of crud removal !! That wasn't easy I know. Kudos

thank you, found myself climbing into the engine bay and squatting under the hood, being 6' tall has its perks but this wasn't one of them

I literally chisled the cross/bypass ports in the cylinder heads (what I call the EGR ports) open, they were completely welded shut with carbon deposits, or what I can only imagine is carbon

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by 68post

Excellent info , and something to watch for doing swaps !

Yeah you won't get that on Car Fix as they do an LS swap in 30 minutes, with no problems or issues, everything just bolts right up!

[y5mgisi]

Awesome! While I am partial to the old quadrajets for daily driver rides, that carb does look quite at home up there.