I appreciate the support. I failed to mention that I have signed up for Jake's "101" class in October, and he's pointed out his four day hands on class in December as a great follow up. I'll have to shake some money out of the family budget and burn some vacation time from work to get to that one, but I'm sure it's worth every dime.
Last night was a tedious one. I got started on the car later than I planned and ran into my first road block: the 10mm triple square tool is too long to fit between the bolt head and the differential housing. I'd seen it mentioned in other places (on the Pelican Parts write up comments) but thought it wasn't going to apply to me. Duh.
So I eye balled a good length and loaded it into one of my vises and out came the Dremel tool. It took a good 20 minutes and several of those thin grit wheels but I made it through and was able to test fit the tool into the bolt head.
A 13mm wrench just slips over the outside of the tool but of course there's nothing like enough leverage to break the bolt loose. Out came the closest cheater bar (the upper section of my floor jack handle). I could tell right away that the tool would want to climb up out of the head of the bolt and that I would only have about 1-2 tries before boogering it up completely.
I was able to use a fat screw driver to keep pressure enough to hold the tool into the bolt head while putting on a load with the cheater and it finally broke loose. I call that a win.
So far the only fastener on the car that has refused to yield was one of the nuts that holds the exhaust manifold to the secondary cat pipe. Exhaust hardware leads a difficult life, so I expect some of them to die a miserable death. I'll replace all six bolts and nuts on reassembly anyway to give myself a fighting chance.
Tonight I'm fully planning on seeing the transaxle laying on my garage floor and getting a look at my clutch. I've mentioned in other threads that I was having some clutch drag which makes shifting into first and reverse difficult. I've bled the system and replaced both the clutch master and slave cylinders. What I'm expecting to see when I get in there is a repeat of a failure posted by someone else here, and that is a crack in the clutch actuator lever. Maybe it will just be some junky bushings, the TO bearing will be coming apart or the pressure plate fingers will be mutilated. No way to tell until I get a look at it.
After that I'll remove the flywheel and find out what kind of IMS bearing they were using when my car was built.
As for the comment that maybe I'll be lucky and that's all it will be, that would be a huge relief. I'm not holding my breath. I cannot imagine that my car has gotten this old without there being wear to the cam chain tensioners and the wear pads. Those are things that seem like they'd be possible with the engine in the car, but certainly not the easiest place to work.
I'm going in with both eyes open and the expectation that I'll be holding main bearings and connecting rod bearings in my hand before long.
I joined PCA last week and I'm hoping to rub elbows with people smarter than I am soon. Hopefully someone will be able to recommend a shop that can polish my crank and check it for straightness, and maybe someone will have the cam tools to allow disassembly and reassembly.