ya know, its funny how it starts..

a simple coolant flush. easy as pie. in a moment of wisdom i deem it more expediant to pull out the thermostat and run fresh water through the motor.

well,

off comes everything baar the housing. easy job. one bolt gone.. the other.. hm, seems a little tight.. oh well nothing some elbow grease wont fi*snap*. oh bugger.

ok so off comes housing and theres a good 20mm of bolt hangin out. easy. after playing around with a blow torch to heat up the surrounding manifold on goes a mini pipe-wrench to get it out.. hmm still seems tight. wd40 didnt help any. ah well a little bit of a shunt with good old mr right arm and *snap* again! shizen.

rite, out cometh the drill and we send some high tensile southward into our problem bolt. great we gots a hole. in goes the easy-out. hm this aint easy. bolt hasnt budged at all. now the difficult-out is just turning with nothing to grip. so that obviosly isnt gonna work.. lets drill the hole a bit bigger and stick a bigger 'out erm, in. bzzzzzzzzz snap. faaarrrrk.

so now i got some high strength beast bit of metal, inside som kinda strong metal, inside some alloy that i dont wanna destroy.

plan b: im takin off heads and manifold. gonna get it all removed and a steel sleeve with nice new thread put in, and since moneys a bit tight atm ill just port up my heads a bit aswell. and while the car is off the road, ill um just buy some 500 dollar bomb to hook around in.

gay!

oh yes this is a precious GT40(explorer) lower manifold too.. not an expendible HO one.

dude....that sux

man that bites a** unlucky dude

f**k hey I pulled my thermo housing off without a drama.

when i was changin my HO to the explorer i snapped 2 bolts,
one next to the fire wall and one at the front, its a prick indeed, we were lucki and the front one came out with an easy out and the back one we welded a socket piece to it,
its all funny, a quick 2 hour job turned into a 5 day job for me, good luck with your problem, i know i didnt help but i like to share trouble's ive had

now now clampy that sux

ohh well
engine apart might as well throw a cam in at teh same time

not so much cam but mighty tempting to do heads!

http://www.vpw.com.au/productgroup.asp? ... GrpID=3438

tho i spose a cam is only 500 bucks more ay. damnit got me thinkin again. i had my cam chosen n all last time i went through all these steps(windows shopping).. but yeh ill wanna do lifters and pushrods aswell. doh! it all adds up.

clampy do it all at once head work will be s**t unless u add a cam

yeh maybe a cam too. means ill wanna slap my 30lb injectors in, in place of the 19s.. and ill need a base tune or else it'l run like poo. gay!

ok so my possible shopping list-

- thread sleeve for the intake
- 1x thermostat housing bolt(haha)
- head bolts(got arp studs)
- head gaskies(got)
- intake gaskies(got)
- edelbrock performer heads(#60379 i think),
- *im not telling* cam
- roller rockers
- rollmaster double timing chain
- cam degree wheel
- water pump
- tweecer or a unichip reflash(il need to reflash unichip at least to get base tune coz of major injector change)
- bling FMS rocker covers
- pushrods maybe(see if cam maker says ill need hardened ones)
- lifters cleaned n checked. or
- new lifter retaining assembly(with lifters too if needed)
- 30lb injectors(got accel ones)
- injector sonic clean

big job! should i do it?

I know how you feel.

I have an intake manifold and intercooler stiiting at home. Intercooler isn't going on until the intake manifold goes on, and the intake manifold isn't much use without upgrading from the E7s.

Only problem is that once I put on the intake, heads and cooler, I reckon I will be pushing the limits of the block, and if I am replacing that, I ain't doin it half heartedly.

You should see what JR123 is doing with my old Fairmont over on Perth E Series forums.

He's getting a new block for the 347 build. Using Trickflow heads and manifold.
Going to be quite the beast that will even give your car a run for its money Kilma in its current state.
I reckon it'll push over 350-400rwhp.
Damn I hope one day I can buy it back.

hehe yeh tim.. that should be alrite.. 400rearwheel aint that hard on the windsor.. a quick visit to corral shows ya that.

yeh damo, man just slap it on anyway.. theres power to be had by upgrading the inconsistant HO manifold.. even with restricted heads its not as bad as the heads in combo with the manifold(185kw motors only had the manifold changed).. do it man, coz then the limiting factor, that being the heads, will be keeping the block safe but still give you a decent uppage of power..

in other news, my cc limit just got increased a wee bit

Its not hard to keep up with my car any more. 300rwhp isn't all that much these days.

When he can keep up with the bike, then I'll be impressed.