Tuesday I started on the oil pan gasket replacement. It looked like a pretty easy thing to do. Remove the starter, which was easy with the one wire and 2 bolts. Then the cross brace under the engine came off. It was easier than the Dodge 440 starter. Then all the bolts were taken out of the pan only to find out that I needed to drop the exhaust pipes from the manifolds to get the pan to come out. I had thought about just working the new one around the pan without taking it all the way off but I did find that a couple of pieces of gasket material were stuck blocking part of the oil pump screen so it was a good thing to take it all the way off.
The exhaust bolts came off pretty good. Sprayed the bolts with rust buster and did the loosen and tighten thing with them until they came off. Since I had the starter out I ran it down to O’Reilly’s auto parts and had them check it on their machine. It was good but just thought it would be good to check it.
Later I was able to put the new gasket on the pan and install it. I even replaced the cross brace before running out of energy and calling it a day.
Wednesday I installed the starter and the exhaust. No big problems until it came to removing the old oil filter. Now it has been some time since an oil filter has given me a workout but this one did not want to unscrew without a battle. It looked a little worse for wear when it finally gave up and unscrewed.
Then with fresh oil and filter I took a serious look at the radiator and fan shroud. This thing has been rubbing the fan on the shroud for awhile now. There was even a thought of lowering the radiator, but after taking out the 4 screws the shroud dropped down to where it should be and was tight enough to just put some cable ties in and I think it will be fine like that. Another thing that was bothering me was the air intake for the engine. From the inside the snorkel just flopped around and didn’t feel like it was attached to anything. Once I removed the heavy covers around the top of the radiator I saw the snorkel was not attached and it had dropped down behind the top of the radiator so that I could not even fit a finger between it and something that would keep the engine from getting fresh air. This was another thing that was good to fix.
So after getting those things fixed I took it for a drive. First just around the block and checked for leaks, then a farther and faster drive still without leaks and finally a long fast drive. No more Smokey but still some leaking oil. I am not sure where it is coming from but it looks like the oil pan gasket is working fine. There is an auxiliary oil cooler the has hoses from the oil filter area to something up around the radiator that might be leaking. More cleanup and drive to find this leak. But the exhaust pipe was not smoking so this is an improvement.
There was something in the mail today for Smokey. I received the LED lights I ordered from China. And tonight I hooked them up to see how they looked just laying inside Smokey. So far I think they will be fun to use in the ceiling lights. Stay tuned for the lighting upgrade.
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| The new LED lights just plugged into the lighter and layed on the floor. That's a lot of light. |
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| In the center of the picture is a small box and that is the intake for the engine. It was dropped down behind here and blocked the air. |
