OK, so here goes, I'm going to do a series of installments on my diesel
rebuild travails. I do this for posterity. Also, note that I am starting
with Part 3 because I have already sent a few notes to the list about this.
I will repost them as parts 1 and 2 later, just to maintain order.

So tonight I decided to take the plunge and pull the head off in
anticipation of putting it on a clean donor block with a good bottom end.
(My bad bottom end is just that--bad).

I pulled off the air cleaner and then the valve cover. The oil that remains
around the cam looks clean. That's good, because the oil pan was full of
bronze-colored shavings.

The head bolts are allen-style. So I went to Ace HArdware and picked up a
10mm allen bolt socket extension. I tried to loosen the bolts, but wasn't
strong enough. After looking around the apartment complex for a good breaker
bar, and not finding one (apparently all good metal tube stock is picked up
by the kids to beat each other with), I settled on the ultra-poor boy
solution. I found a deep spark plug socket that fits over the handle of my
ratchet, stuck an 8 inch extension into the socket, and gave it a turn.

It worked. In my enthusiasm to see if I could loosen the head bolts, I undid
all of them without draining the antifreeze (dohhh). So now antifreeze is
running down the pavement. Hope the racoons don't drink it. It'll make em
even meaner. I also hope the antifreeze doesn't rust anything before I get
back to it this weekend. The bottom end is fried, but I hope good valves,
etc don't rust in the meantime.

Also I sprayed WD-40 on the exhaust manifold bolts in anticipation of
swearing at them later.

One final note--diesel intake manifolds are really simple. Sort of like rear
wheels on a front-wheel-drive car. You kind of get the impression it doesn't
do anything but sit there and be hollow.

Til later

Daniel Snow
PhD Student
UC Berkeley

'82 Vanagon Diesel
'78 Puch Maxi Luxe Moped
'01 Xootr Scooter

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp