I stopped by the shop on the way home tonight and he's made a lot of progress in one day. He was working on the rear drive axles, had everything apart, putting the new seals in and whatnot. It looked like at least 3 of the 4 CV joint boots had tears in them.
The entire exhaust was off and sitting on a table. He pointed out that my new(er) muffler heatshield had a rub spot on the muffler side, combination of the heat likely and some movement. Is this commonplace? I have the one from DMCH that has that material layer adhered to the metal.
Wow, the manifold gaskets. Holy frig am I happy I convinced myself not to try this at home. He did a great job and didn't break a single stud (whoo hoo!). He showed me a couple of the studs that he welded on a nut to take them out easier with. The manifolds look reasonable and he'll grind out a flat surface on them prior to reassembly. And boy oh boy do PO's ever leave surprises sometimes. There are two murdorous holes where some previous work done on the manifold studs did a number on the metal surrounding the hole in the engine block. If you're facing the side of the engine, on both sides it is the hole/stud in the upper right hand corner. The passenger one is harder to get at and it is the worst of the two. He said a heli-coil will work in the drivers side one, but he'll have to get creative with the passenger one. Again, not my area of expertise so I'm happy to pay someone qualified to fix it.
Overall the car looked pretty good. My POR-15 work up front is still ok. Of course it's way easier to see from below when the car is on a lift compared to when I did the work while on ramps. He hasn't gotten to the brakes yet although the rotors looked fairly decent on the front side and a little rusted on the backside. We had a look at where my auto trans governor wiring is routed over and out of the way of the exhaust manifold and we'll make sure it stays that way.
He also mentioned putting some insulation over the wire going to the engine oil pressure idiot light as it didn't have much protecting the actual wire. It's on the other side of the heatshield from the muffler but still likely gets hot. He also noticed my belts weren't quite tight enough and will snug them up properly.
The gasket kit has just about everything you need. We'll put new bolts in the catalytic converter connection as those are done. The remains of my asbestos heat shield under the cat is in miserable shape... but I wasn't sure if there was a replacement for that?? I told him he could get rid of it, but if there's nothing to go in it's place, we'll just leave it where it is. Also going to put my oil dipstick sheath clip bolt in as it was missing and I couldn't seem to wiggle the new one in when it was misaligned.
I mentioned the engine motor mounts and what he thought of them (after seeing someone on here recently talk about replacing theirs). He said the rubber is crispy and it might be something I keep in mind about tackling sometime in the somewhat near future.
I always find it really neat to get even just a few minutes under your car when it's up on a lift. Cause it seems so rare to get this view. I would love to have more time and do some real up close and personal looks and clean things up.
