It took me a few days to trace a coolant leak to the oil cooler cover. Don’t let the size of the holes that these develop fool you, you can lose a lot of coolant. Under pressure it will squirt out.
I ordered the cooler cover, hardware, and gaskets from PartSouq.
As you can see, there was a lot of nasty crud built up inside the cover and around it. I’m still flushing with distilled water to help clean it out.
A couple of deviations from the FSM: I did not drop all the lower exhaust components, I only unbolted the front exhaust manifold from the lower exhaust pipe. I also did not unbolt the air pipe from the engine, only from the exhaust. Plenty of room to slip tjr
Tips:
1) Clean out the holes where the exhaust manifold studs go. No brainer, but I was a little lazy and didn’t do this, had a hard time with one stud.
2) Use a proper long extension to work on the underside of the exhaust manifold to the exhaust pipe bolts. You don’t want to have a Frankenstein extension wobbling all over that tiny torx head.
3) If you use a lot of penetrating fluid to loosen up the exhaust hardware, it will likely burn off the first time you fire up the engine. It will look like you have a bad, smoky exhaust leak. Make sure it’s burned off completely before you start throwing your wrenches across the garage.
I took it slow and it took me a long weekend afternoon to do this job once I had all the parts. Probably could it in 2 hours again. Happy to report that my 80 is now back on the road, no leak.
I ordered the cooler cover, hardware, and gaskets from PartSouq.
As you can see, there was a lot of nasty crud built up inside the cover and around it. I’m still flushing with distilled water to help clean it out.
A couple of deviations from the FSM: I did not drop all the lower exhaust components, I only unbolted the front exhaust manifold from the lower exhaust pipe. I also did not unbolt the air pipe from the engine, only from the exhaust. Plenty of room to slip tjr
Tips:
1) Clean out the holes where the exhaust manifold studs go. No brainer, but I was a little lazy and didn’t do this, had a hard time with one stud.
2) Use a proper long extension to work on the underside of the exhaust manifold to the exhaust pipe bolts. You don’t want to have a Frankenstein extension wobbling all over that tiny torx head.
3) If you use a lot of penetrating fluid to loosen up the exhaust hardware, it will likely burn off the first time you fire up the engine. It will look like you have a bad, smoky exhaust leak. Make sure it’s burned off completely before you start throwing your wrenches across the garage.
I took it slow and it took me a long weekend afternoon to do this job once I had all the parts. Probably could it in 2 hours again. Happy to report that my 80 is now back on the road, no leak.
