Poor Truck

Things have not been doing so well with the 'ole truck these days. I've had to make a major change in direction on the path way of modifications. I decided I'd fix an exhaust leak. The leak was where the manifold bolts to the head. Long story short, here's what the head looks like off of the engine with several broken studs.



Here's what the block looked like.



I took the heads to a machine shop. He took out the studs but tore one head down to tell me what kind of shape they were in. Bad shape. Decided to buy new heads rather than throw a bunch of money into old cast iron junk. The boxes arrived today.



Here's the clean deck (nearly clean)



Studs installed



Head Gasket



Heads sitting on the block



Torqued down



I sat the intake manifold on to take a look



I then test fit the intake manifold gasket / bath tub thing before I put the RTV on. Good thing, it was for a B block. The B block is smaller than the RB and it didn't fit. If I would have had the RTV on there I would have had a real mess to clean up. Now I get to spend some more money at AutoZone tomorrow to get the right gasket.

Once I have the right gasket, then I can bolt on the intake, the valve cover gaskets, and carb. Then I can remount the A/C and the alternator, put the belts back on and reattach all the electric. Then I get to test fit the headers. I hope these headers work with the truck. They are Summits cheap headers. I know I'm going to have some trouble, the collector is 3", the reducers are 2.5", and the exhaust line itself is only 2". That means I have to find a way to get from 2.5" down to 2" or from 3" to 2". Not cheap either way. It will also likely be a pain in the rear. Too bad I just had the the exhaust redone too. This would have been part of it.

Live and learn.