Relying on the wealth of information provided in this board, as well as the sources referred to in this board, I picked up a wrench for the first time in about 25 years, pulled the engine out of my daughters 97 OBW, pulled the heads, changed the gasket, had the valves done, replaced the water pump, and put it all back together again. To my utter surprise, it fired right up and ran. After dealing with a small issue with a mis-threaded EGR pipe fitting (had to pull the intake manifold back off and re-tap the threads) it even ran well.
Also, on advice from this forum, and willing to try anything before dropping the tailshaft from the AT, I began the process of flushing the tranny in order to deal with car's torque bind. One thing I didn't read here is how incredibly messy the job of dropping the pan and changing the AT filter is - all I can say is . . . damn. But, I was amazed at what a huge difference even one tranny fluid change made - the TB is almost completely gone. I will continue the three drain-and-fill process concluding with Mobile 1 synthetic and Trans-ex but I am relieved to not have to dig into the tranny.
Life has been good, until the "check engine" light came on tonight. It appears I have another adventure before me.
