well today was sposed to be exciting, and it started out that way, i opened up the shop at my friends house where i have my tools and do my work, there was a nice sheet of freshly sheared aluminum in the rough shape of a heat shield, so i took the jig saw and shaped it up, filed all the edges, drilled a few holes and she slid right on like it belonged there!
then things started to go downhill, went and got the tap and drill for drilling the manifold, took out the ole 15mm wrench and loosened the top bolts, the front bottom, then to the rear............NO GO, i tried, then i tried more, i put gloves on and crawled underneat, i tried prying with stuff, i tried to get my foot in there, i pulled an pulled till my arms hurt. NO GO!!!

so i said i would do the grease deal, i chucked up the drill bit, looked at the manifold, recalling a pic i recently looked at, i wondered why the hole was drilled off to the side on the TOP of the hump, when right smack dab in the middle looks like such a good spot (can you see where i am going with this?) well soon i figured out why the pic had the probe over there CENTER WEBBING!!!!!!! *%$#*%@*#*$*%*&&$*&*%&%*%&&*#&% so i tapped THAT hole and put a nice allen plug in there and proceded to drill out the hole in the PROPER place! ok, blah blah and its installed......

next fuel PSI gage, everything goes smoothly, gage went on and everything nice, heck my day must be gettin better...............NOT, start the truck up, 10psi, hmm was 15 last time i checked........ took it for a ride, 10..8....WOT....2!!!!!!!!! , so here i am getting ready to go to texas, (and am still leaving in the morning) now i got this to worry about the whole trip. hope it lasts till i get home, or it brakes by a nice SMART dealer.

ok, done venting, thanks guys.

 

Gotta use a hammer on the wrench to knock 'em loose sometimes. Just a little rap with a hammer will free what all the grunting and cussing in the world won't budge. I had to rap on one last week and I had the turbo off a couple months ago.

You aren't the first guy to drill in the center of the manifold, don't feel bad.

Sorry to hear about your LP.

 

didnt i mention? I HIT IT WITH A HAMMER TOO!!!!!!!

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one that this happens to! If you think drilling in the center of the exhaust manifold is bad, ask MnTom about the day we put his tranny in... Lets just say to not try to take a brass fitting, with blue loctite on it, out of the transmission case. I bet you break the fitting off everytime and then get the crap scared out of you Thank god for easy outs and heat! When we were trying to get the broken fitting out I was silently thinking how much money I had in the bank account for a new case

 

I thought about not sayin anything, but i always admit when i screw up, and maybe i can make someone elses day better when they see what mine was like. and the most important, maybe someone else will learn from my mistake.

 

I broke my second "bullet proof" transmission today. The wife is getting suspicious that they may only be bulletproof to BB's. I am running out of "I didn't do anything" checks.

But along more of the same lines, recently I had the AFC cover off dinking around and went for a test drive. NO power whatsoever. I tuned and tuned and re-tuned. Took the plate out, gauked at it for a while, checked for gov arm travel, heck I spent the next two hours and 5 gallons of test fuel trying to figure it out. On a sharp day I would've known instantly that I forgot to hook up the AFC boost line

mama said there'd be days like that!

Chris

 

It could have been a lot worse! At least you know your lift pump is dead now, instead of just driving around with it dead all the time, you can now replace it. I spent an hour trying to figure out how to get my valve body out after undoing all the bolts. Just had to pull a little harder

Eric