After Friday's excitement, Rog had to fix the damaged 91. So I soldiered on alone.
First up, mounting the exhaust manifold.
That went well until I removed what was left of the heat shield and discovered that my manifold was cracked pretty severely. I needed to run to the junk yard anyway, so a new manifold was added to the "to buy" list.
I figured I could at least get the intake on, so I grabbed the gasket out of the kit and.... it was the wrong one. Because, roadkill. If you don't get that rederence, Google it. You're welcome.
I shouldn't have trusted Amazon when they said the kit fit my 83. The gasket had the later oval ports where mine are all round. After calling around a bit, oreilly's said they could have it by 9AM the next morning. Frustrated, I called it a day.
Sunday morning Rog and I drove over to Speedway Auto Salvage, my go to junk yard. They have a good mix of old and new stuff.
I picked up a tube manifold from a 94 2.3L as well as the fan and some random bolts. Rog picked up a steering wheel to replace the delaminated one in his 91. He has no power steering, so you really have to strong-arm the thing to turn at slow speeds.
On the way back into town, I called oreilly's to see if the intake gasket made it. Surprise! It didn't make the morning truck. They swear it will be in by 2pm though. Great.
Before getting to the house, we stopped at lowes and bought a brass plug to cap off the EGR. I'm not opposed to EGR, I just can't find the info on how to hook it up properly without the computer controls. Back at Roger's, I paint and then mount the manifold. It looks awesome! Except...
Hmm. What are these holes? Some googling and a post to the general discussions section, and I have my answer: air injection ports. One of the 80s more "throw some mud on the wall and see what sticks" ideas for emissions reduction. A tap and some Allen set screws later and they're plugged up. I was finally able to mount my exhaust manifold.
When the oreilly's guy didn't call me by 3pm, I was getting worried. But luckily, my fears were unfounded. The gasket was ready to be picked up. With the intake gasket in hand, we finally started making some progress. The intake, carb, power steering pump, and alternator all flew on.
Since we plugged the EGR at the manifold, it was no longer needed at the carb. I wasn't sure if the spacer was needed for the carb and I didn't have shorter studs to put in, so we decided to flip the spacer over, which effectively blocks the EGR off completely. The vacuum port for the PVC system just comes out of the back now.
We left it there. I was a bit disappointed. We were so close to being ready to put it in! But that would have to wait for another day.
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