It's been s few weeks since the last update but work has continued. Once the engine was buttoned up I began working on the seats that Allie picked up. The issue we ran into was that they were memory seats and we don't have that option in the car. I figured this would be easy and just wire the power up to the switches, but no such luck!! The memory panel has to be powered to make the seats work as the switches don't really switch power. After a bit of messing about with jumpers and filling a new swear jar, I got it worked out and the seats work just fine.
So, after the seats were sorted and bolted in I could finally go for a decent drive (still no plates)up and down the road we live on and a few of the side roads. Well, once out for more then 2 minutes it got good and hot. The temp gauge moved up above the 180 mark, so i figured it needed some additional coolant, as this was the first time it was good and hot. Well, I pull into the garage, get out and there is steam and water in the truck and on the ground. I immediately felt bad and figured the coolant take was bad that the PO had put in. I ordered up a new one and waited for it to arrive.
While waiting i continued to work on the paint and scratches. I have wet sanded about 40% of the car by now after working with the touch up paint and clear.
New coolant tank comes in and I get ready for that epic task. I empty the swear jar and buy some new beer. I figure this job from what I have read with be a real swear jar filler. Undo a few bolts, and then get busy under the hood to undo the hoses. Lo and behold, one of the hoses on the back side has blown off now that the engine has been hot enough to build pressure!!
I threw some money in the swear jar, got my pliers out and proceeded to try to [put that hose back on. Well, that is no easy task. But with the help of wallet emptying swearing I got it on and clamped up. This job is much better done by a flexible skinny (anorexic?) person. That is not me :-)
Hose hooked up, tank topped up and a restart to make sure we have a pretty good fill before we go out for another shake down ride. a couple of BIG air burps and a continued top up and I now begin to see some motor oil getting burped up and small globules of oil running out. Severe depression has now set in and I'm swearing in 6 or 7 languages. F the swear jar, I'm working up a real hate for this car now. So I shut it off, close it up and move on to other projects and ignore the car for a few days. I do some reading and find that the oil cooler is a failure spot for this as there is only oil in the water but no water in the oil. Tonight I pull the oil drain plug to let out some oil into a pan and there is no water. No oil in the oil filter housing.
I decide to pull the cooler and check for leaks. Drain the coolant and see some but not a lot of oil come out with the water. Once the coolant was probably down below the cooler level I screwed the plug in and got busy taking the cooler off. Pull the hose, unscrew the 4 - 5mm bolts and slip it onto a zip lock bag so no mess gets all over the engine.
Once on the bench, I allow the cooler to drain, mostly oil as the coolant went down when the rest of the system drained. I put a rubber cap on the hose nipple, made up a rubber fitting to go on my air gun, set the regulator to 25 PSI. I run inside and ask Missus better 7/8ths to come out and be the looker for bubbles as a try to hold my Rube Goldberg pressure thing together and onto the bottom of the cooler. Fill the one side with water, apply pressure and after 10 seconds bubbles are definitely coming up on the left side of the cooler!!! YAY!! we may have just dodged the big bad, bad engine event. Whew I feel better and will now have an adult beverage supplied by the swear jar :-0
I ordered the "S" cooler from FCP for 121$$ along with new seals and we should be back in shake down mode next week.