So I spent an entire day with degreaser, brake cleaner, an ice scraper and razor blades trying to get the block deck and head surfaces as clean as possible.  The person who thought it was a good idea to move away from MLS gaskets and use graphite should be beat.  Badly.  It was a very boring and tedious day but one head is now back on.

Changing the oil pressure sending unit was more challenging that it appeared.  While it’s nut is 1-1/16 in size it was designed so that none of my 12 point sockets would actually catch on it.  In addition is was longer than any of my sockets were deep.  Turns out you need a special super deep socket just to change this unit.  At this point all the auto stores were closed and I really didn’t feel like buying a specialty socket that costs nearly as much as the sensor itself.  The nut on the sensor is also so shallow that it sits below the edge of the valley cover.  So I said to hell with it.  The valley cover was the only top end piece that was still on so I figured why now complete the job.  So I yanked the knock sensors and their harness and pulled the valley cover.  Grabbed a crescent wrench and swapped the sending unit.  Special socket?  I don’t need no stinkin’ special sockets!  One of the knock sensors was also a bit corroded but since it isn’t throwing any codes at this point I am not going to worry about it.

You really need to be a two ton gorilla in order to torque these head bolts down.  It’s especially not all that easy when you have the header flange flopping around getting in your way.  There was one bolt I just couldn’t get to torque, it ended up about a third of a turn short of where it needs to be.  I am thinking it should be ok though.  I’m more worried about having cleaned the surface well enough for the new gasket to seal properly.  After digging this deep and seeing some of the parts, it really needs to be rebuilt but I don’t have months to get that done and be without a car.  I will probably start coming up with plans to build or buy a forged stroker or move up to a larger cube motor.

I think I am going to call it a day for now and hopefully get some good progress done on it later in the day.