Yesterday was the last day of driving the car for 2021; went down to Round Valley and parts of Hunterdon county. Put 82 miles on it and enjoyed a few nitrous hits on the interstate when traffic was low. Removed the hood after the drive, because I am determined to find and repair the oil leak at the back of the engine. It has bothered me for some time, but now that the driving season is over, I am going to tackle it before getting into the exhaust project. I have always been mindful of the "borderline" high oil pressure (which I have described in this thread, and another separate thread) and I am sure that the oil leak was caused/magnified by the higher oil pressure. Engine builder and I think that the check-valve in the melling oil pump is probably stuck and just over-pressurizing the system. Anyways, this is all covered by the 24 month warranty on the engine, in which I am currently in month 23! So he's going to get me a replacement pump, gasket, and whatnot.
Today, I had a good couple hours of camaro work in between my current upstairs bathroom renovation project, so I removed the full exhaust including the headers, removed the driveshaft, drained the trans fluid (looked/smelled just great after 2 years of heavy use), removed the transmission, removed the torque converter, drained the cooling system, removed the radiator and fans, drained engine oil, drained power steering fluid, and some other stuff. Everything went smoothly today aside from the Lokar TV cable housing not wanting to come out from the transmission. After fighting with it for 25 minutes, I had to sacrifice it, and later on noticed a metal burr on the housing that was lodging it in place. So I'll need a new lokar cable. Also, the biggest pain in the butt was the insane moisture in the air. Everything in my garage was coated in water droplets, the vinyl floor, my tools, the tv, tool boxes, every surface of the car, every nut and bolt and socket. Plus the oil mess under the car, it was one heck of a messy day and everything was slippery. Look at the humidity droplets on the valve covers and header tubes below!...and the wet floor, simply from humidity.
Tomorrow I will be taking off the sniper efi throttle body and the nitrous stuff, along with the fuel lines and electrical wiring. I know I probably could do the oil pump, gasket, and rear main seal with the engine lifted up in the engine bay, but I have better chances of getting everything buttoned up properly if I put the engine on a stand. I will be using this 1-Ton chain fall hoist which will be mounted to a chain (and that 10,000 pound strap) to my 2"x"10 garage rafters. I also will be putting up some screw-jack supports from the floor to the rafters to keep the beam deflection to a minimum. Once the engine is up high enough, I'll roll the car out, lower the engine, put it on an engine stand, and roll the car back into the garage. This makes more sense for me to do as opposed to the cherry picker, because with the cherry picker I would opt to remove the front nose again, and I always worry about screwing up the paint.
