Leaderboard

Big update, the heads are on! The factory repair manual says to "coat each side of the head gasket with liquid sealer", which I interpreted as copper gasket spray. I've used this stuff on EJ motors, it seems to work just fine. I also used it on the copper sealing rings at the bases of the cylinders... Another thing the manual mentions is a spacer tool to help torque the bolts that hold the rocker shafts on. I just took apart some EA71 rocker assemblies and borrowed the towers to use as spacers. I was able to borrow the head alignment tool used when bolting these heads on, you can see it bolts to the coolant crossover flange and holds two of the intake bolt holes in place. It's starting to look like a real engine! I torqued both heads in steps, the repair manual is pretty vague on what I should actually do. This is the OEM manual, too. It says to tighten in stages before the final torque, so I did 5 pound increments. It went very smoothly! Next is rocker shafts, and I have some NOS parts on their way to continue my assembly.

Honestly you could probably run just about anything in the old 4 speed transmission - Dexron, 10w hydraulic oil, even 15w40 motor oil. The military has variously used all of these in Allisson auto transmissions for decades and as well as HMMWV's that have had 4L60's, turbo 400's, and more recently the 4L80E's. All used under pretty ugly conditions. My 26,000lb truck came with 15w40 in it's Allisson and it was built in 2008. I've even run across a couple EARLY Legacy's with Dex in the front differential. Seemingly to no real problem - one in particular was a 1990 that had well over 300k on it when it was finally retired. Ran ATF in the front for 200k miles that I know of. It's more about proper maintenance and observing the intervals of fluid changes - which does depend on what fluid you are running - some have longer life than others. Oil analysis is the best bet here. GD

The blend door control is very stiff so maybe replacing the cable would be beneficial. The heater usually works pretty well, but it could be out of whack to where it's not turning the heat completely off. I'll dig into it a little more and see. It might be time to take it to the shop. Do these cars have a pressure switch? I don't see one when I look for parts at the auto parts store. I'm guessing it's all controlled by the ECM, but I'm not entirely sure. If I remove another shim, there is no gap so I just removed the one.

I like to buy from Scott, i've bought two kits and he assembled a "custom" mix and match kit for what I needed easily: https://www.sjrlift.com/