Going through my pictures, I realize I didn't take as many as I thought I did over the past 8 weekends of work. I tend to get lost in flow from 8 am until 5 pm, most of the time not even eating. Therefore, pictures are usually an afterthought. When you have 1 day a week outdoors to work on something, time seems to disappear.

After getting 3 new timing cover bolts to fix the obvious oil leak where the A/C bracket previously was, I discovered after driving around, that there was still another oil leak. Oil was thrown all over the inner fenders, P/S hoses, alternator, frame rails, etc. I purchased of the the UV dye kits with the fashionable yellow grandpa shades and went to work. I was anticipating for the worst (head gasket, timing cover leak elsewhere) since there was oil all over the front of the timing cover. However, turns out it was the front main seal. The picture below is the oil creeping up over the timing indicator before dropping onto the crankshaft and spewing everywhere. I also noticed, that the rear pulley on the harmonic balancer was wobbling while it ran. I don't have a picture, but I'll grab one this weekend and edit this to show how it was actually dented on the inside.





At this point, due to the extensive oil infestation, I decided I was going to take off all the accessories on the engine to better clean things and also replace the alternator. Here's a picture of a two functional alternators, no idea how the oil soaked one was still properly charging the system:





I was all set to do the starter bump method to remove the crank bolt, but I had purchased one of those stubby Milwaukee impact wrenches, and it was able to crack the bolt easily. When I pulled off the harmonic balancer, I couldnt' believe what I saw. It looks like instead of replaceing the front seal, someone put blue RTV on the FRONT of the front main seal, which makes zero sense:





The radiator was leaking and who knows how old the hoses were, so out they came as well. Steel #7 lower-to-mid as well. Also spend an entire day getting the sludge off the engine and surrouding frame rails, etc. Gunk HD Gel, SuperClean, power drill brushes, bronze brushes, brass brushes, nylon brushes of all shapes and sizes.





I also decided to wire wheel/paint or sandblast/powdercoat any rusty brackets, pulleys, etc. So over the course of the last month, I've been taking certain parts to the powdercoaters like engine pulleys and engine brackets and also having the bolts ceramic coated. Below you can see the pulleys are all in a satin black, where the P/S, alternator, and A/C brackets are all powdercoated in a dark grey.





I took out all the power steering hoses and reservoir, super messy since I wasn't planning on doing that so I didn't purge it while it was all still running. Those I wire wheeled or cleaned/restored and used some engine spray paint, knowing full well it's probably just going to disintegrate when ATF fluid hits it. I'll get some pictures this weekend of this as well.

The whole air intake, MAF box, throttle body components were removed and cleaned in various ways. Air box was wire wheeled, primed and painted. Plastic hoses cleaned and protected. Awaiting new MAF gasket and some bolts. Picture needed here.

I checked the TPS while it was out and it seemed to read ok via 4crawler's great writeup. Still not 100% sure on the certainty there as the IDL-E2 was giving me infinite at 0.57 mm. Largest feeler I could get a <2.3k reading was 0.45 mm to 0.47 mm. But everything else checked out and I wasn't going to mess with it until the engine was all back together. I don't think it's the cause of the random miss warm idle. I have a full vacuum line kit to replace, not to mention the throttle body was horribly gunked up. EGR is also rusted and probably original, so replacing that as well. Too many other variables I haven't checked or fixed yet.

I painted some other random parts as well using some Krylon Rusty Metal Semi-Gloss: intermediate drive shaft, coupler, high-pressure p/s hose frame rail bracket, exhaust shield:





Ok, that's enough for this one. I'll put some more up tomorrow.