finally got back to working on the head swap today. Went about swapping the exhaust cam over and installing the JDM intake cam. Moved the front coolant tap and the rear thermostat housing (this required clean-up and the use of sealant for the front O-ring and a new factory gasket on the rear). The Allen socket head cap screws I used for the thermostat housing showed signs of rust so I made a trip to Ace and bought some stainless replacements. Here is all that:
Before I put the head in place I decided to remove the three exhaust manifold studs that I had to replace with longer studs for the supercharger manifold. Two came out with no problem but the last one was a PITA. Kroil was my friend in this. Once I had it out I could see the threads in the head looked stripped. I'll have to go to my local hardware store that carries metric taps and get one to chase the threads with. Couldn't get a picture of this one.
Next I tackled the crap on the pistons. I am not quite sure what this was, possibly oil that appeared to be leaking by the valve seals. I used some BrakeKleen, let that soak in and then hit it with a nylon cleaning wheel on my drill. Here are before and after pictures of that:
Finally, the other day I looked at the MS steering wheel hub to see how I could move things around so the Momo wheel would line up properly and allow the turn signal canceling piece to be in the right orientation. It appeared that I could remove the black plastic piece from the hub and reorient it . After some gentle work I was able to do so. Blurry picture of what I am talking about, I will try getting better shots once I get to work on installing the wheel (you are looking at the small black piece in the center):
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