What a nightmare.
Get down there at 1pm.
Pull the head off.
Pull the head I brought down with me out of the packaging it's been in for over a year. It looks like I pulled it out of a car sitting in a lake. Don't want to spend the time cleaning it up and installing on the car (especially since we are baking in the sun and don't know where anything is in the area). So I check out the head I just removed. It looks perfect. The head gasket isn't blown through in any places. The bottom end is clean, the head is clean. There is no oil in the coolant and no coolant in the oil. I don't have a straight edge but I eyeball the plane of the head as best I can and it looks true and flat. So I decide to throw the head back on the block with a new headgasket. 530pm, sunburned to hell it's all reassembled. Try to start the car. Battery dead. Waste 20 mins trying to get jumper cables. Jump it. Engine turning over but sounds as if there is no compression. Pull the valve cover to double check the timing. All lined up. Pull the bolts out of timing gears to make sure nobody had taken those off and reassembled wrong. Those are correct. Pull plug #1 to see if it's getting spark. Yes, and plug is wet with fuel. Pull plug #2, that is getting spark. Happen to look down into the well and see cylinder is filled with fluid. Look back in #1, dry. Pull #3, also filled with fluid. #4, dry. Wrap a napkin around a screw driver(that happens to have that pain in the ass black sticky shit from the doors all over it thanks to JJ). Can't reach down far enough to soak any up to see if it's gas. Pull a vacuum hose off and shove it down the hole to suck some up. It's hard to see the level inside a black opaque hose so I ended up with a mouth full of the shit. Tastes sweet like antifreeze with a hint of gas. FUCK! Now it's 6 o'clock. Time to bite the bullet. Call u-haul to rent a truck and trailer to get the thing home the 300 miles. $350 for rental. $250 in fuel and tolls later I get the car home at 2am.
Go this morning before work to a friends shop to buy a head he just pulled off his car. Had it refreshed a few months ago. I give him $200. Head, intake, exhaust mani, valve cover.
Go to leave the shop in my turbo car and my oil pump explodes. God this is my week. Still got the u-haul truck and trailer so I get the guy to flat bed my car back to shop. Then get a ride home to get truck and trailer and return 3 hours later with it. Oh, called out of work too. Get home with the car. Push it into the driveway.
Start disassembly of the 97M(once again). Pull the head off. Check it with a straight edge. Sure enough it's warped. About 3/32" higher in the middle. Relieved that's what it is and not a crack in the water jacket. Remove exhaust mani and valve cover from the newly purchased head. WTF! The cam/valve area is coated with that copper radiator stop leak shit! Yeah, the one with the small metal filings! No way am I using that so I can ruin 2 oil pumps in 1 day. Kinda makes sense to me since the guy just pulled it off his car after blowing his oil pump! How did he not notice that shit in there and why the fuck was it in there to begin with?
So now I am back to square one with only that ratty head from the lake but I am determined to get this fucking car running today. I check the lake head for flatness. It's perfect. I get 5 cans of brakekleen and clean it up as best I can. reassemble the motor. Try to start the bitch up.
It starts! A lil noisy at first but after letting it run for 15 mins and then taking for a short test drive it quieted right down. So tomorrow I will drain the radiator flush, and flush again. Change the oil. Put back the power steering/ac belt. Then I start ripping off some of the mods on the car that mom doesn't need. Yeah, not sure if I mentioned that earlier but this car was a gift for my mother since she wrecked her Miata a few weeks ago and has been borrowing my daily driver 94 ever since. I was kinda ok with spending the $2250 on it for her because after all she did give me life but $3000+ is a lot over my budget. So I will be removing: FM springs with KYB-AGX's, JR CAI, FM Shock tower brace, Billet aluminum slat grill. Then I'll take the one she wrecked and part it out for whatever I can get.
Maybe I'll even be able to afford to fix my own damn car now.
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