Recently just moved to Nebraska to farm popcorn for my in-laws. Life is busy, but great. A lot has happened since I posted last…
I’ve always liked detailing and cleaning vehicles, but outside of oil changes, I didn’t do much mechanically. I was always somewhat intimidated because that just wasn’t something we did growing up. My granddad was a mechanic, so we didn’t get charged labor, and seemed like a good idea. He had some kind of deal with autozone so anytime something happened, he’d replace it cheap and I’d be on my way. Autozone parts weren’t lasting, I went through 3 alternators in a year and a half, so I decided I should probably try Denso since it was factory. Granddad is hard headed and screeched lifetime warranty, but he wasn’t the one being stranded, so I just did it myself and watched a couple YouTube videos. Turns out, this stuff isn’t very hard. This truck had a lot of leaks under the hood, and somewhat neglected, so I set out to make it as nice as I could all around.
It seemed like everything under the hood had a layer of dirt and oil on it, so I started by just taking stuff off and cleaning it. The more stuff I took off the more I realized why everything was so nasty. Every o-ring, gasket and vacuum/water line were dry rotted and leaking. So I replaced all of it. Sorry there aren’t any transition pictures, I was in the zone and only took before and afters.
The goal was to stay factory as much as I could. The manifolds were warped, exhaust leaks were abundant even after new gaskets. I heard really good things about LCE’s headers, so I tried them out. They’re incredible. There’s some that say the factory manifolds work great, and mine did for 30 odd years, but this was definitely an upgrade. I liked them so much I sprung for the intake kit…and was pretty let down. It looks neat and all, but no noticeable difference other than noise. Higher maintenance too.
