Coolant disappearing and can't find where

A regular mechanic shop can do this?

I've already drained the oil, it's mixed in with some other old oil, I could pull the pan and get whatever's left. Would that be enough?

Not trying to sound snarky or anything, I've just never heard of this sort of thing being done before.

 

Well, it's all back together and running great! ... so far.

There were of course a few hiccups but before that... I took the cylinder head to a machine shop, the guy's been doing it for 45 years. Explained the situation, he didn't seem to think it was unsalvageable. $550 later I have a cleaned up head that he says is like new.

Friday morning I commenced reassembly, which also included the cleaning of mating surfaces etc. The 1st hiccup came when the $40 Beck Arnley 0161075 head bolts I ordered from rockauto apparently accept a different double hex socket than the OEM. I had also gotten the head bolt socket set from from rockauto W83184 this was a total score for $8 you get a M8 and a M10, Azone sells just the M10 for like $70. Anyway, the bolts were neither of these, M9 maybe? Thankfully, an Azone nearby had some in stock for $80.

The video vvillovv posted in #64 was very useful in that the guy left the exhaust manifold on the head, disconnecting it from the exhaust pipe. It occured to me that this might be easier than monkeying around with the EGR etc the way Gasket Masters do, just leave it all on the head. So I took the exhaust manifold off and put in on the head along with the EGR etc and then mounted it on the block, it's heavier but I think this saves time and hassle.

Late afternoon the 2nd hiccup came when I discovered that the Fel-Pro head gasket kit didn't actually have everything I needed, in fact there's no parts list telling you what's what. As I recall the missing parts were - one of the EGR gaskets, gasket for small coolant manifold thing near the EGR, some O rings on top of the camshaft bearing caps, O rings for oil filter housing, and coil to valve cover boots (maybe I shouldn't have expected these to be in there).

Saturday morning I continued and was able to get O rings from the dealer, I reused the EGR gasket and siliconed the coolant manifold. Also discovered that the Fel-Pro valve cover gasket doesn't fit so I reused the old one.

My ears are burning now after douglasjre's lecture above. I feel sort of like an addict, aftermarket parts are so tempting.. they're cheap and I'm a cheapskate. Have I learned my lesson, time will tell.

In the afternoon I had it back together enough to fire it up. Did so and, hiccup 3, immediately gas was running out of the fuel rail at cylinder #1 like a drinking fountain! When I had taken everything apart weeks earlier I discovered one of the injectors was missing the little plastic cap on the tip (attached pic), I ordered one to replace it. Then one day, I had left the injectors in the rail, for some reason, fuel pressure forced on of the injectors out and it fell down into the sludge in my catch pan. I had pulled what I thought was the fuse for the fuel pump. Blah blah blah, I cleaned off the dirty injector, swapped it, and the leak stopped.

Hiccup 4 - started it up again, misfire cylinder #3. Swapped coils and spark plugs, misfire #1. Replaced spark plug, since that is what I had moved to #1, still misfire. Went to swap injectors and discovered that the electrical connector wasn't on all the way, now I had sort of noticed that I didn't hear a click when I put it on but I thought I just missed it. Upon closer examination I discovered that the little orange rubber gasket inside the connector had gotten out of place, took a tiny flathead and pushed it back into place.

Started it up and it purred, no codes! Drove it around the block, no codes. Drove it 10 miles at 40 - 70 mph, no codes and averaged 56.2 mpg!

YES!!!

 

Thank you, this was really helpful. See my latest post.

 

Indeed
I went with Fel Pro mainly because Gasket Masters recommended it, of course they were talking about just the head gasket not the whole kit. Now I know better.