Another bird, another headgasket…

Disappearing coolant, a worsening hesitation, and a little white smoke led to the realization that yet another head gasket swap was in order. This one just didn’t exit quite as fantastically as the last one. I left everything attached to the head that I could (intake, exhaust, injectors, coil pack, wires, etc.) and pulled it off Fri. after work, put it almost all back together the next day, and then polished it off Sun. morning. Unfortunately, after all that, all it would do is crank. It had spark, fuel, nothing was forgotten, and several days of head scratching and sensor testing turned up nothing. To make a long story short, apparently lining up the cam and crank sprockets was not good enough for this motor. In order for it to run, it had to be a half tooth off … the cam pointer has to point at the valley to the left of the marked tooth on the cam gear. Go figure.  Anyway, the good news is it’s running again!

Please note irony of previous quote from two months earlier, “I didn’t feel like taking the head off since I just did that with the head gasket on the other sunbird…”

12/04/09 – teardown
12/11/09 – it finally lives

Headless bird.