Well... cylinder head's off.
I'm realizing that this car is, as one of my old Lincoln Tech instructors would call it, a "Gomer Pyle Special." Took off the thermostat housing and... snapped off one of the bolts at the head. Why? Because the bore was gunked up with gasket material and it was so hard to turn the bolt that the head snapped off. Well, at least I was able to remove the housing by turning the whole thing. Oh, and there was no thermostat in it.
And to get that off by turning, I had to pull the distributor, and that bolt snapped off too.
Today was the day for snapping bolts. Snapped an exhaust manifold stud and... A cylinder head bolt. Neato.
The camshaft looks awful. Just awful. Rust on the lobes and you can see where it scraped off when I was cranking it for the compression test.
Awesome.
But with the head off I could inspect the gasket and pistons... You can see the snapped head bolt at the center of the top row. At least it didn't break off flush or inside.
I was hoping for something more dramatic. Last time I did this on my old 280ZX the gasket was torn away in two places at the #2 cylinder. This one just seemed to have leaked. And then... the head. 5 cylinders were sooty, as expected.
But yeah, take a look at #1.
So now I have some decisions to make. I can:
- Pull the engine and rebuild it.
- Try to find a good L28 and hope it doesn't have issues and do a replacement or
- Swap in something else, like a SBC.
I'm leaning toward the rebuild. I'm doing a resto-mod so it isn't that I'm committed to all original... I just like the engine and want to keep the car as close to original as possible, other than the modifications I have planned. (Rear disc brakes, bluetooth head unit, backup camera, LED replacement lights)
I think I'll wait and see what the machine shop says when I take this head in for pressure testing.
In any case, that engine's coming out. And while it's out, may as well go to work on fixing the rust holes.