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Hi, I'm Mike from 1AAuto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years! We're dedicated to delivering quality auto parts, expert customer service, and fast and free shipping, all backed by our 100% satisfaction guarantee. So visit us at 1AAuto.com, your trusted source for quality auto parts.
In this video to celebrate us hitting 400,000 subscribers, we're going to be tearing off the top end of the engine in our 1996 GMC Sierra K 1500. Now, this is the super popular 5.7L GM V8. These motors came in tons of vehicles. They're popular in tons of swaps, and we're going to pull the heads off to do the head gaskets and show you guys a lot of the intricate inner workings of engines.
If you like this video, please click subscribe. We have a ton more information on this truck as well as many other makes and models. You'll also get to check out the time-lapse video that we're going to be making of this at the same time. If you ever need parts of your vehicle, be sure to check out the link down in the description over to 1AAuto.com. Thanks again for subscribing and enjoy!
The step we're going to take here is to back our truck up to the garage. Warm the engine up to operating temperature. Pull it back in, and get the exhaust manifolds off while they're still hot.
Now, granted it's not a lot of fun working around a hot exhaust manifold, but it's even less fun to break the bolts off on your exhaust manifold. Even though we're taking the heads out and we could change the studs and bolts out a little bit easier on the bench than you can in the vehicle if you can avoid this step, it's going to save you a lot of time and hassle later in the project.
Now, careful because the exhaust manifolds are hot. Use a 14mm socket and ratchet to remove the exhaust bolts; there are six on either side. When doing a big job like this, it's very important to keep all your hardware organized because you're going to have a lot of it. What I did is I made a little drawing of our exhaust manifold. Mark them driver and passenger, and punch some holes in so I can remove all the bolts. Put them in here. Set this aside and know what these bolts are and where they go when the engine goes back together. We have some heat shields that are going to come off as well; be sure to keep track of these. Our exhaust manifolds are now disconnected from the cylinder heads. We don't need to remove them completely for our purposes though.
Remove the negative post from your battery using a 5/16 or an 8mm wrench. Be very careful; this wrench isn't long enough, but if you have a longer one, you may be able to hit the positive battery terminal with it. You want to be very careful you don't do that. Remove the terminal and isolate it from the battery. That will give us a little more access to the other side.
We'll undo the thumbscrew on top of the throttle body. Pop that off, disconnect the breather hose, undo the mass airflow and intake air temp sensors, and where we're going to be disconnecting so many wires here. I went ahead and labeled all of them with painter's tape. You can choose to do that or take pictures. There's a variety of ways to do it.
Undo the latches on the air box. Lift it up. Remove your filter take, and take the entire intake setup off the truck. Wiggle the bottom of the air box off and remove all of that so we have access to our exhaust manifold. We'll now repeat the process removing the same six bolts on this side.
You'll need to disconnect the positive side of the battery. We removed it entirely so we had some more room to show you guys what was going on. Pull the harness coming from the battery and over to the ECU out of the top of the fan shroud. Just move it off to the side for now. We'll then remove the three 10mm bolts along the top of the fan shroud. We'll then use a 10mm socket ratchet and a long extension to get it looks like there were two 10mm bolts on each side. However, we've only got one so remove one from the each side of our fan shroud. You can then remove the upper radiator shroud from the vehicle.
Use a 3/8 breaker bar or ratchet to release the tension from the tensioner and remove your serpentine belt.
Remove your radiator cap by pushing down and turning it counterclockwise. If you look down below your upper radiator hose, you'll see the drain plug for the radiator. We're going to reach down there and we have our drip pan underneath the truck. We're going to reach down and unscrew that. Using a pair of pliers or groove jaws like we have here, collapse the clamps on the upper radiator hose then remove the hose from the radiator. We'll then do the same thing on the thermostat housing side of the hose. You can now remove the upper radiator hose from the vehicle.
Remove the throttle cables by flipping the lever out. Pop the plastic one out of its clip, and then pull the cable for the main throttle cable around until it sits into the notch. You slide the cable and out. Use a pair of pliers to collapse the tabs on the throttle cable retainers, and pull them through their bracket. Push down on the tabs on the bottom side of the throttle cable bracket. Pop the retainer out for the cruise control cable. Then use your flat blade screwdriver to pop the clamp open for the main throttle cable, and lay both of these out of the way. Remove the connector on the back of the A/C compressor. Use a flat blade screwdriver to pop the retainer open, then lay it over the compressor. We'll also disconnect the switch on the back. We'll use a small flat blade to pry off the ears on the A/C compressor clutch connector, just let all that hang out of the way for now. Pop out the A/C compressor line on the passenger side of the engine, pushing the tabs down and pulling it out of the retainer. Then remove the four 13mm bolts on the top of the A/C compressor. We'll then lift the A/C compressor off its bracket and carefully place it in the passenger side of the engine bay.
Remove the 10mm bolt on the back of the alternator. We'll then remove the two 13mm on the front. Pry the alternator up and out of its housing and remove the connector. Pull back the boot and remove the 13mm nut on the power stud. Remove the alternator from the vehicle.
Remove the 10mm bolt right above the idler pulley. This secures the outlet hose on the water pump to this accessory bracket, which we're going to remove. Just so we don't lose this bolt, we'll move the hose out of the way. You can release it from the retainer if you have to, and just throw that 10mm back in there a couple of threads so we don't lose it. Use the 13mm socket and ratchet to remove the center bolt from the tensioner. Remove the tensioner from the vehicle.
Pry open the retainer for the alternator power wire. Pull that out of the way. We'll then use our screwdriver to release this radiator hose as well. This is the one for the heater cord that goes to the top of the intake manifold. Remove the two 15mm bolts, as well as the 15mm nut securing the alternator bracket to the front of the engine. We'll do this with a 15mm socket ratchet and extension. Remove the accessory bracket from the vehicle. Pinch together the two plastic tabs on the heater hose, wiggle them out of their holder. Lay that hose off to the side. Remove the clamp on the water pump to heater hose. Remove the hard pipe way. Lay that off to the side as well.
Remove the 15mm nut, securing the grounds to the top of the thermostat housing. Remove the grounds. Put that nut back on finger tight just we don't lose it later. We'll then lift up on the tab and disconnect the cooling temp sensor and the EGR. Pry out the retainer for the harness. We'll then disconnect the throttle position sensor, as well as the idle air control valve connector. We'll let that whole harness hang out of the way.
Underneath the vehicle, you'll find the crank position sensor behind the harmonic balancer; disconnect that. Move the harness up and out of the way. Use a 14mm wrench to loosen this nut behind the bottom water pump hose for the lower radiator. There's a ground strap on here that we'll need to remove in order to get this harness up and out of our way. Slide the ground off of the stud then we'll just throw that nut on their a couple of threads to hold it in place then have retainer right here that we'll need to pop open with our flat blade screwdriver; another retainer here. Disconnect vacuum solenoid connection here as well as the one behind it. It's a little tricky to see under the harness, but you'll also need to remove your map sensor connector and release this section of the harness. Lift up on the white safety tab and use a small flat blade screwdriver to pry out the ears. Carefully lift up on the connector and remove it from the top of the manifold.
Open up the harness retainer on the passenger side valve cover. If we have enough stuff disconnected here, we also have one over here on the driver side. You also have to disconnect the connector over on the driver cylinder head here. We should have enough slack to lay our harness to the back of the engine. We're not ready to do just yet.
Remove the spark plug wires from the spark plugs. Don't worry about where these go right now, because the distributor is marked with the positions of all the plug wires showing. We'll show you the firing order when be put it back together. Be sure to open up all the wire looms and release the plug wires from them. We'll repeat these steps on the opposite side. Disconnect the plug wire from the ignition coil as well.
Remove the two T20 Torx screws one here and one on the backside of the distributor. We'll do this using a T20 Torx bit, a ratchet, and an extension. These are not captured, so what I like to do is loosen them up pretty much all the way and then lift up on the distributor cap and bring that out nice and smooth and level so we're careful not to lose those screws. Before moving your distributor, be sure that the engine is at top dead center compression.
This means that the vehicle's distributor will be in the correct timing placement, so when we align the timing marks and reinstall it later. It will go and hassle-free. This is a very important part of the engine's timing, which will allow us to set our distributor in the correct place. It's a good time to show you what TDC is and why we use it. On the driver side of the timing cover, there's this little ear with a notch on it. We use a 16mm socket and ratchet on the center bolt of the crank pulley to rotate it, and this is a bit more difficult with the engine assembled because you'll have compression you need to deal with.
Rotate it clockwise only nice and smooth and slow and you'll see a notch on the crank pulley. This notch, you overshoot it, you have to keep going clockwise. You can't rotate these backwards. Right there, tells us that our piston is at top dead center. This means that the number one piston is at its highest point in the cylinder bore and you can see that this is actually almost flush with the deck of the block at this point. The other important part is that we're going to want that on top dead center compression.
Now, if the engine was together right in those last few degrees before I got that line marked up with a crank, it would get really tight because of the compression in the motor. If you don't feel that compression when rotating it, it means cylinder number one is in its intake stroke which is not what we're after for timing. However, where there is no compression due to the head being off right now, another easy way to check is both our lifters are down can see what one looks like when it's up here. These are what open the valves. These are part of what open the valves in the vehicle. If they're both down, both our valves are closed.
Our piston would be at the top of the bore, and our engine would be in its compression stroke on cylinder number one. Using a 13mm wrench, loosen the bolt on the distributor hold down plate, which is below the distributor on the passenger side of the motor. They do make special distributor wrenches for this, which are nice to have, but you can get by with a regular wrench. It's just a little more time-consuming. Remove the hold down bracket from the distributor. Disconnect the electrical connector on the back of your distributor and carefully wiggle the assembly up and out at the back of the engine.
Remove the cap on the Schrader valve on your fuel rail. We'll then put some paper towels around it, and use a flat blade screwdriver to press the top pin. Be sure to wear safety glasses and stay out of the way of this, because they tend to bleed off a little bit of pressure. Using a pair of pliers, compress the clip on the vacuum hose for the brake booster and remove it from the bracket. It helps to twist this to free them up. Pull it out, and lay it off to the side. Using a 16mm flare nut wrench, loosen the fuel fittings on the back of fuel lines. These are down behind the intake on the driver side. Move the two 10mm nuts securing the ignition coil and control module bracket to the top of the engine. We'll do this using a 10mm socket ratchet and extension. Lift up on the bracket and move it around the module and the coil. Be careful of any other sensors in the area. Now, lay the whole engine harness up on the back of the engine, which is going to make this whole process a lot easier for us. We'll now remove the two 10mm nuts on the studs just below the two we just removed. You can then remove the ignition coil and module as well as the bracket from the engine.
Remove the 10mm bolt securing the dipstick tube bracket to the side of the cylinder head with the 10mm socket and ratchet. Rotate it out of the way. Using a 5/8 spark plug socket, ratchet, and socket extension. Remove the four spark plugs from each cylinder head, so there are eight in total. Repeat this process with the remaining three spark plugs on this side, and then all these steps on the opposite side. Using a 22mm wrench, loosen the EGR tube nut going into the intake at the driver side front of the lower intake manifold. Pop the connector out of its retainer. Lay that off to the side.
Disconnect the breather hose on the intake coming from the driver side valve cover, and lay it out off to the side. Using a 13mm socket, ratchet, and extension, remove the hold down on the EGR tube at the back driver side of the intake manifold. Remove the 14mm nut and two 14mm bolts and the power steering pump bracket. We'll do this with a 14mm socket and ratchet.
To remove the power steering pump pulley, you'll need a power steering pump pulley puller tool, which we have here. It's actually few separate pieces. We'll show you how they go together and how to remove the pulley with them. The fan on his truck is staggered, so the blades are not equidistant from each other. The largest gap is here, so we'll rotate that in front of our power steering pump pulley so that it doesn't interfere. Install the shaft of the puller into the hole in the center of the power steering pump pulley. Get that down as far as you can and then loosen the nut here. Make sure that it's still on the threads, even when it's bottomed out. We'll then take these two half-moon style clamps, and place the wider end around the pulley with the skinnier end around our puller. This sleeve will go over them and hold them together.
You can now turn the center. It will hold the nut or vice versa and so that locks into place. We use a 21mm wrench to hold the nut and a 17mm to drive the shaft in which will pull the nut with our clamp and sleeve on it out, bringing the pulley off of the shaft. Ours is really pressed on there tight, so we're using a ratchet and a socket just to get a little more leverage on it. It will eventually pop off, and we can remove all of this from our vehicle. Using a 13mm socket and ratchet, remove the remaining bolts from the power steering pump bracket. Ours was covered in some grease, so we didn't see it at first, but at the bottom inside corner of the power steering pump bracket, there is a 14mm bolt that will need to be removed; remove the bolt. Release this hose clamp at the top with a flat blade screwdriver.
Remove the power steering pump bracket. Remove the eight bolts around the perimeter of the lower intake manifold; there are two in each corner with a 13 mm socket and ratchet and an extension is necessary. Using a pair of pliers, collapse the clamp on the thermostat hose going into the water pump; you can do this on either end. It's just that our other one looks pretty rusty so we're to leave that along for now. Slide the clamp off, wiggle the hose to free it up, and then pop it off. Remove the four 10mm bolts on each valve cover with the 10mm socket, ratchet, and extension. Remove the valve cover.
Be sure to mark which is left in, which is right as they are different. Repeat these steps on the opposite side. Remove this valve cover as well. Don't forget to remove the vacuum hose before removing your intake manifold. Once the valve covers are off, you can lift up and remove your intake manifold. Remove all of the 16mm nuts, securing the rocker arms to the head. You'll need to keep the rockers and pushrods organized so they go back where they came from. We'll just remove all the nuts for now, and then we'll show you how to keep them in line.
To keep things organized, they do make specialty boards designed to keep all of these small block Chevy parts in line. I've simply numbered each cylinder. This is how the V of our engine works. Bank one is on the driver side. Bank two is on the passenger, and then it's odds and evens from there. It starts exhaust, intake, intake, exhaust, exhaust, intake, intake, exhaust on each side, so what we'll do is here we have our number two exhaust rocker arm and pushrod. We'll pull the pushrod out. We'll pull the pushrod out, put it next to our exhaust. Put a rocker arm on there and our washer and nut so they go back exactly where they came from, and we'll repeat this process for all the remaining rocker arms, pushrods, nuts, and washers on each side of the engine.
Remove the 17 head bolts from the driver's side cylinder head. There are four in the top row, five in the center row, and eight along the bottom. We'll remove all of these with a 13mm socket, ratchet, and extension. Much like we've done with every other part that comes off the vehicle, I've made a board to mark the locations of our bolts. Be sure there's a drain bucket underneath the vehicle, and double check that there are no more connections attaching your cylinder head to any other part of the vehicle before lifting it off and removing it. Be careful as these do have some way to them.
Remove your head gasket. Remove the ground strap and nut on the back of the passenger side cylinder head. Do this with a 14mm wrench. Once you get that off, you can repeat all these steps from the driver side over here. Be sure to move your drain bucket before you finish removing the bolts on the opposite cylinder head.
Remove the coolant temp sensor with a 19mm socket and ratchet, and, if you'd like, you can also remove all of the bracket tree on the sides of the head with a 10mm socket, ratchet, and extension. Be sure to mark or take pictures so these brackets go back in the exact same place they came from. Now, I've been soaking these heads in a mineral spirit cleaning solution in our parts washer to loosen up all of the dirt and debris. If you don't have access to one or those cleaners, you can use a variety of different oil and grease removers like a brake parts cleaner or Carb Clean. There's also a number of different engine degreasing solutions as well as some home remedies that people make or mix themselves. All of these are acceptable solutions.
All we want to do is get a wire brush and just start getting all the junk off of the heads. What we're going to do now is use a small wire brush to clean all the carbon out of the ports, or as much of it as we can. Just because we have it off and it's something we can do to help our engine breathe a little easier run a little better, we're going to brush it and then blow it out with compressed air, but I'm actually going to lay it on its side here while I'm cleaning it out to try to prevent everything from falling down on top of the valve even though we will have the valves out later and we can blow it out then.
Any debris, I don't have to get into the cylinder head. I don't want to get in there, so I'll lay it on its side and clean it out that way. After some scrubbing, spray it out with some solvent. I'm using a brake cleaner, but there's a variety of solutions you can use. Then reach in there with a paper towel, and wipe it out. If you have compressed air, I recommend you blow it out as well. Look at all that dirt and debris that comes out of the engine. This is all unburnt fuel and oils, and other chemicals that go inside of the combustion chamber, and all that's going to do is clog up our ports and prevent our vehicle from producing power and being efficient.
We'll give you a little side-by-side and that was just a quick cleaning. You can really get in there and scrub those out, but look at the difference between just a few seconds of scrubbing and wiping out that port versus all the other ports. This is going to flow better breathe better. We're going to get a more efficient, more powerful engine. Just go through and clean out all of your ports intake and exhaust the same way we did with the first one. Be sure to keep those brushes clean. We're just using some brake cleaner or whatever solvent you're using to clean the engine, just spraying out all that grease and goo; grabbed a bucket to keep it in. The cleaner you keep that brush, the faster and easier you're going to be able to remove all this carbon buildup.
Lay of our heads make the exhaust ports face down when we have it laying flat, so I just grabbed a block of wood, and I'm going to put under the head to keep them at least flat and hopefully help drain out any material we removed. Then we'll clean these the same way we did on our intake side. This isn't even everything, but this is just some of the fun off and debris from a paper towel I placed under our ports just to give you an idea of how much junk really gets in there.
Now, you don't absolutely need to clean this as part of the job. For the amount of time we just spent doing it, our engine will thank us. The difference between our dirty cylinder head on your left and a clean cylinder head on the right is pretty clear. Not only are we going to keep dirt and debris from falling in the engine ports and gasket surfaces when we reassemble, but also we've opened up the holes through which our motor breaths, which is going to make everything run and work a lot smoother. We've masked off our tool cart.
Our engine has already been cleaned and degreased, and now we're going to spray it with some Chevy orange engine enamel paint. This paint is designed for the high temperatures created when an engine is running. Be sure to wear proper safety equipment and only do this in a well-ventilated and warm area. Now, allow about 10 to 15 minutes between coats before laying another, and we're probably going to do two or three coats on this to get it looking nice. This may require more or less depending on the condition of the steel and the type of paint you use. For the last coat of paint, we're going to go on a little thicker and let it sit a lot longer. Again, this is a cylinder head. Don't be worried about imperfections in the paint, runs, fish eyes. The fact that you can see the texture of the rusted head underneath, it's really just to pretty it up a little bit. It's not like you're painting a body panel. You can put the last coat on nice and thick to make sure we cover up any of the white spots. Now, we'll let this side sit until the paint is dry.
Now in our shop, we only work on one vehicle at a time, but if you're in a place where you have more than one project going on at once, want to keep any open engine components like the head were here, we have the block covered with a trash bag or some kind of other wrap to keep dirt and debris from getting into the engine. All the surfaces are very fine machine, and any dirt and debris that gets in there and stays in there when the engine runs could cause some serious damage. We'll uncover it now that we're to work on it, and, just to be sure, we'll take some compressed air and blow everything out of the cylinders like fluids and residue that fell in there when we removed our heads.
Now the majority of what you're seeing coming out of these cylinders right now is some motor oil that I actually put in there to keep the exposed cylinders from rusting and also to help create a barrier for anything trying to sneak past the rings on the pistons. Now, we'll go in there and just wipe out all that moisture with a paper towel. You want to check before you go wipe the cylinders out there are no large particles anywhere that you're going to rub into the cylinder more while wiping it out. If there are, just reach in there and pick them out. We'll take a razor blade scratch off all those surfaces. Once again, this stuff is going to fall into the cylinders a little bit, so we'll have to blow them out one more time, but by getting all that moisture and everything out of there on the first run, that'll keep it from wadding up and getting stuck so scrape it down.
Again, you don't want to use any kind of heavy abrasive or power tools to clean these off because this is a machine flat surface, and you don't want to risk changing any of the surfaces. We'll do the same thing on the opposite side. Now, we'll blow all of the debris back out of the engine. You'll also want to make sure you blow into each one of the threaded holes for the head studs, and get any debris or fluids out of there. We'll then wipe down all the surfaces with brake cleaner and a clean paper towel or rag. Once the surface is wiped down, be sure to get inside of the cylinders again as well.
Once the bulk of the material was been removed from the gasket surfaces, go ahead and get the fine stuff with some red scouring pad. We'll repeat this step on the opposite side. You want to make sure that the block as well as the gasket surfaces on the bottom of the head look this clean. We will have to blow out the cylinders again, and give it one more wipe with some brake parts cleaner, but we'll want to make sure that this is the finish of both mating surfaces. Now, it's time to put our heads back on. We'll give our gasket surface one last wipe with some brake clean and a clean rag or paper towel. Be very careful not to let any debris fall into the engine otherwise you'll be doing the blowing out process again which tends to make a mess of fluids and requires you to wipe it down again so just go easy. You don't need a lot of pressure here. We've already got this nice and shiny and clean. We're just trying to remove any oil or residue that's left on it.
There's no left and right to the head gaskets. However, you do need to pay attention to the label saying this side up. Place it in and align it onto its dowel pins and just take a second to double check that all the holes line up correctly. This is not something that you want to use any type of sealant on. With the gasket on its dowel pins, you can now reinstall the cylinder head onto this side of block. Reinstall your cylinder head onto the block, being very careful not to damage or misaligned the gasket in the process. It will rest on to the dowel pins just like you gasket did. You can now install a few of the head bolts.
You always want to use new head bolts whenever you take the head off. I'm installing two of the longer ones now just to keep it in place. The two medium length bolts will go in the center row of the head, one at the front-most hole in the center and one in the rear-most. Your short bolts will go on the outside of the head, all the way along the bottom. The rest of the top and middle row will be filled in with the longest bolts. Be sure not to use any lubricants when installing these, as your new head bolts should come coated in a thread sealant to prevent coolant from leaking through them once the engine is running.
Now, as with any hardware, these bolts are a half-inch even the ones removed were 12mm. All I'm going to do is use my half-inch socket and ratchet, and I'm just tightening from the wrist here just to snug this down. I've not been put anything torque or force on them other than to just get them down and touching the head to make the torqueing process go more smoothly. You want to stagger this and work from the inside out. You don't necessarily need to follow the torque sequence exactly here, but I'm going to follow the same path you would with the torque sequence anyway just as a precaution. Torque all of the bolts to 22-foot-pounds on the first pass in proper torque sequence. We'll now use a torque angle gauge to torque all of our long bolts, an additional 75 degrees. The two medium bolts, an additional 65; and the short bolts on the bottom, an additional 55 degrees. The way this works is we'll install it onto the bolt, rotate the center section to zero it, and then add the appropriate number of degrees.
Sometimes it's helpful if you left your exhaust manifolds on the truck like we did, because the studs on the other end are so rusted, so get a bungee cord and secure the manifold up and out of your way. Then we'll repeat the process of installing the head on the opposite side. Just because we were blowing around a lot of the dirt and debris from our engine, I can see that there's a lot of debris that made its way into the engine valley around the lifters. This is true of your motor too. Just take paper towel and wipe that stuff out.
You can now reinstall all of your pushrods and rocker arms. Start by installing the pushrod into the lifter. Reinstall your pushrods, and set the rocker on with the washer. Place it in, and the beveled acorn side of the nut actually faces up on this. We'll just start this by hand, because we're going to need to make an adjustment to all 16 valves, so just repeat this process and install all of your rocker arms and pushrods into their original locations.
Using a 16mm socket and ratchet, rotate the crankshaft until the top dead center mark is aligned on both the pulley and the timing cover; that's too far. You overshoot it, you have to keep going clockwise; you can't rotate these backwards. When the timing mark is aligned, you'll want to check that both valves, in this case, where our valves are still loose, we'll be checking that both lifters are down.
If these lifters are up… Actually, it will be this lifter that is up. It means that your engine is on the exhaust stroke but ours are both down so we're at top dead center compression, and we can now adjust the exhaust valves on cylinder one, three, four, and eight in the intake valves on one, two, five, as well as seven. To do this, we'll spin down the nut on our rocker. In our case, this is a 16mm while rotating the pushrod between our fingers. You can see there's a lot of lash here. The goal is to get rid of that lash. You shall feel the pushrod gets a little harder to rotate and it has no up and down movement to it.
At this point, you'll want to rotate the nut another 360 degrees or one full turn. This sets the preload on the lifter. Now, you can use a torque angle gauge if you'd like. However, since we're just making 360 degrees, I'm going to set the handle with my wrench perpendicular to the head and just spin it around once without letting off. We'll now repeat this process on the exhaust valves for cylinders three, four, and eight, as well as the intake valves on cylinder one, two, five, and seven.
Once you've set your valves at top dead center compression, we'll use our 16mm socket and ratchet to rotate crankshaft back to top dead center, because your cam moves at half the rate. Your crankshaft does rotating the crankshaft 360 degrees rotates the camshaft 180 degrees. This means that we'll be at top dead center
Tools used
Hi, I'm Mike from 1AAuto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years! We're dedicated to delivering quality auto parts, expert customer service, and fast and free shipping, all backed by our 100% satisfaction guarantee. So visit us at 1AAuto.com, your trusted source for quality auto parts.
In this video, we're going to be working with our 1996 GMC Sierra K1500. We're going to show you how to remove the intake manifold on a 5.7-liter V8. This is the entire manifold from the lower up as one piece.
If you like this video, please click subscribe. We have a ton more information on this and many other vehicles. If you ever need parts for your car, you can follow the link down in the description over to 1AAuto.com.
Here are the items you'll need for this repair: full metric socket set, ratchet, socket extensions, full metric wrench set, torque wrench, flat head screwdriver: sm; mid; lg, 16mm flare wrench, power steering pulley puller, T20 torx socket, e8 inverted Torx socket, pliers, groove jaw pliers, locking pliers, pry bar, drain bucket, razor blades, wire brush, brake cleaner, brake grease, rust penetrant, rec scouring pads, paper towels, zip ties, bungee cords, painters tape, marker, flashlight, gloves, safety glasses
Remove the negative post from your battery using a 5/16 or an 8mm wrench. Be very careful; this wrench isn't long enough, but if you have a longer one, you may be able to hit the positive battery terminal with it. You want to be very careful you don't do that. Remove the terminal and isolate it from the battery. That will give us a little more access to the other side.
We'll undo the thumbscrew on top of the throttle body. Pop that off, disconnect the breather hose, undo the mass airflow and intake air temp sensors, and where we're going to be disconnecting so many wires here. I went ahead and labeled all of them with painter's tape. You can choose to do that or take pictures. There's a variety of ways to do it.
Undo the latches on the air box, lift it up, remove your air filter and take the entire intake setup off the truck.
You'll need to disconnect the positive side of the battery. We removed it entirely, so we had some more room to show you guys what was going on. Pull the harness coming from the battery and over to the ECU, out of the top of the fan shroud. Just move it off to the side for now.
We'll then remove the three 10mm bolts along the top of the fan shroud. We'll then use a 10mm socket, ratchet and a long extension to get. It looks like there were two 10-mm bolts on each side. However, we've only got one so remove one from each side of our fan shroud. You can then remove the upper radiator shroud from the vehicle.
Use a 3/8" drive breaker bar or ratchet to release the tension from the tensioner and remove your serpentine belt.
Remove your radiator cap by pushing down and turning it counterclockwise. If you look down below your upper radiator hose, you'll see the drain plug for the radiator. We're going to reach down there and we have our drip pan underneath the truck. We're going to reach down and unscrew that. Using a pair of pliers or groove jaws like we have here, collapse the clamps on the upper radiator hose then remove the hose from the radiator. We'll then do the same thing on the thermostat housing side of the hose. You can now remove the upper radiator hose from the vehicle.
Remove the throttle cables by flipping the lever out. Pop the plastic one out of its clip, and then pull the cable for the main throttle cable around until it sits into the notch. You slide the cable and out. Use a pair of pliers to collapse the tabs on the throttle cable retainers, and pull them through their bracket. Push down on the tabs on the bottom side of the throttle cable bracket. Pop the retainer out for the cruise control cable. Then use your flat blade screwdriver to pop the clamp open for the main throttle cable, and lay both of these out of the way. Remove the connector on the back of the A/C compressor. Use a flat blade screwdriver to pop the retainer open, then lay it over the compressor. We'll also disconnect the switch on the back. We'll use a small flat blade to pry off the ears on the A/C compressor clutch connector, just let all that hang out of the way for now. Pop out the A/C compressor line on the passenger side of the engine, pushing the tabs down and pulling it out of the retainer. Then remove the four 13mm bolts on the top of the A/C compressor. We'll then lift the A/C compressor off its bracket and carefully place it in the passenger side of the engine bay.
Remove the 10mm bolt on the back of the alternator. We'll then remove the two 13mm on the front. Pry the alternator up and out of its housing and remove the connector. Pull back the boot and remove the 13mm nut on the power stud. Remove the alternator from the vehicle.
Remove the 10mm bolt right above the idler pulley. This secures the outlet hose on the water pump to this accessory bracket, which we're going to remove. Just so we don't lose this bolt, we'll move the hose out of the way. You can release it from the retainer if you have to, and just throw that 10mm back in there a couple of threads so we don't lose it. Use the 13mm socket and ratchet to remove the center bolt from the tensioner. Remove the tensioner from the vehicle.
Pry open the retainer for the alternator power wire. Pull that out of the way. We'll then use our screwdriver to release this radiator hose as well. This is the one for the heater cord that goes to the top of the intake manifold. Remove the two 15mm bolts, as well as the 15mm nut securing the alternator bracket to the front of the engine. We'll do this with a 15mm socket ratchet and extension. Remove the accessory bracket from the vehicle. Pinch together the two plastic tabs on the heater hose, wiggle them out of their holder. Lay that hose off to the side. Remove the clamp on the water pump to heater hose. Remove the hard pipe way. Lay that off to the side as well.
Remove the 15mm nut, securing the grounds to the top of the thermostat housing. Remove the grounds. Put that nut back on finger tight just we don't lose it later. We'll then lift up on the tab and disconnect the cooling temp sensor and the EGR. Pry out the retainer for the harness. We'll then disconnect the throttle position sensor, as well as the idle air control valve connector. We'll let that whole harness hang out of the way.
Underneath the vehicle, you'll find the crank position sensor behind the harmonic balancer; disconnect that. Move the harness up and out of the way. Use a 14mm wrench to loosen this nut behind the bottom water pump hose for the lower radiator. There's a ground strap on here that we'll need to remove in order to get this harness up and out of our way. Slide the ground off of the stud then we'll just throw that nut on their a couple of threads to hold it in place then have retainer right here that we'll need to pop open with our flat blade screwdriver; another retainer here. Disconnect vacuum solenoid connection here as well as the one behind it. It's a little tricky to see under the harness, but you'll also need to remove your map sensor connector and release this section of the harness. Lift up on the white safety tab and use a small flat blade screwdriver to pry out the ears. Carefully lift up on the connector and remove it from the top of the manifold.
Open up the harness retainer on the passenger side valve cover. If we have enough stuff disconnected here, we also have one over here on the driver side. You also have to disconnect the connector over on the driver cylinder head here. We should have enough slack to lay our harness to the back of the engine. We're not ready to do just yet.
Remove the spark plug wires from the spark plugs. Don't worry about where these go right now, because the distributor is marked with the positions of all the plug wires showing. We'll show you the firing order when be put it back together. Be sure to open up all the wire looms and release the plug wires from them. We'll repeat these steps on the opposite side. Disconnect the plug wire from the ignition coil as well.
Remove the two T20 Torx screws: one here and one on the back side of the distributor. We'll do this using a T20 Torx spit, a ratchet and a socket extension. Now these are now captured, so what I like to do is loosen them up pretty much all the way, and then lift up on the distributor cap and bring that out nice and smooth and level so we're careful not to loose those screws.
Remove the two T20 Torx screws one here and one on the backside of the distributor. We'll do this using a T20 Torx bit, a ratchet, and an extension. These are not captured, so what I like to do is loosen them up pretty much all the way and then lift up on the distributor cap and bring that out nice and smooth and level so we're careful not to lose those screws. Before moving your distributor, be sure that the engine is at top dead center compression.
This means that the vehicle's distributor will be in the correct timing placement, so when we align the timing marks and reinstall it later. It will go and hassle-free. This is a very important part of the engine's timing, which will allow us to set our distributor in the correct place. It's a good time to show you what TDC is and why we use it. On the driver side of the timing cover, there's this little ear with a notch on it. We use a 16mm socket and ratchet on the center bolt of the crank pulley to rotate it, and this is a bit more difficult with the engine assembled because you'll have compression you need to deal with.
We'll rotate it clockwise only, nice and smooth and slow. You'll see a notch on the crank pulley. This notch right there tells us that our piston is at top dead center. This means that the number one piston is at its highest point in the cylinder bar and you can see that this is actually almost flushed with the deck of the block at this point. The other important part is that we're going to want that on top dead center compression.
Now, if the engine was together right in those last few degrees before I got that line marked up with a crank, it would get really tight because of the compression in the motor. If you don't feel that compression when rotating it, it means cylinder number one is in its intake stroke which is not what we're after for timing. However, where there is no compression due to the head being off right now, another easy way to check is both our lifters are down can see what one looks like when it's up here. These are what open the valves. These are part of what open the valves in the vehicle. If they're both down, both our valves are closed.
Our piston would be at the top of the bar and our engine would be in its compression stroke on cylinder number one. Using a 13mm wrench, loosen the bolt on the distributor hold down plate which is below the distributor on the passenger side of the motor. Now they do make special distributor wrenches for this, which are nice to have, but you can get by with a regular wrench. It's just a little more time consuming. Remove the hold down bracket from the distributor. Disconnect the electrical connector on the back of your distributor and carefully wiggle assembly up and out of the back of the engine.
Remove the cap on the Schrader valve on your fuel rail. We'll then put some paper towels around it, and use a flat blade screwdriver to press the top pin. Be sure to wear safety glasses and stay out of the way of this, because they tend to bleed off a little bit of pressure. Using a pair of pliers, compress the clip on the vacuum hose for the brake booster and remove it from the bracket. It helps to twist this to free them up. Pull it out, and lay it off to the side. Using a 16mm flare nut wrench, loosen the fuel fittings on the back of fuel lines. These are down behind the intake on the driver side. Move the two 10mm nuts securing the ignition coil and control module bracket to the top of the engine. We'll do this using a 10mm socket ratchet and extension. Lift up on the bracket and move it around the module and the coil. Be careful of any other sensors in the area. Now, lay the whole engine harness up on the back of the engine, which is going to make this whole process a lot easier for us. We'll now remove the two 10mm nuts on the studs just below the two we just removed. You can then remove the ignition coil and module as well as the bracket from the engine.
Using a 22mm wrench, loosen the EGR tube nut going into the intake at the driver side front of the lower intake manifold. Pop the connector out of its retainer. Lay that off to the side. Disconnect the breather hose on the intake coming from the driver side valve cover and lay that off to the side. Using a 13mm socket, ratchet, and socket extension, remove the hold down on the EGR tube at the back driver side of the intake manifold. Remove the 14mm nut and two 14mm bolts in the power steering pump bracket.
We'll do this with a 14mm socket and ratchet. To remove the power steering pump pulley, you'll need a power steering pump pulley puller tool, which we have here. It's actually a few separate pieces. We'll show you how they go together and how to remove the pulley with them. The fan on this truck is staggered so the blades are not equidistant from each other. The largest gap is here, so we'll rotate that in front of our power steering pump pulley so it doesn't interfere.
Install the shaft of the puller into the whole in the center of the power steering pump pulley. Get that down as far as you can and then loosen the nut here. Make sure that it's still on the threads even when it's bottomed out. We'll then take these two half-moon style clamps, and place the wider end around the pulley with the skinnier end around our puller and this sleeve will go over them and hold them together.
You can now turn the center and hold the nut or vice versa until that walks into place. We'll use a 21mm wrench to hold the nut and a 17mm to drive the shaft, in which will pull the nut with our clamp and sleeve on it out, bringing the pulley off of the shaft. Ours is really pressed on there tight, so we're using a ratchet and a socket just to get a little more leverage on it. It will eventually pop off, and we can remove all of this from our vehicle.
Using a 13mm socket and ratchet, remove the remaining bolts from the power steering pump bracket. Ours was covered in some grease so we didn't see it at first. At the bottom inside corner of the power steering pump bracket, there is a 14-mm bolt that will need to remove. Remove the bolt, release this hose clamp at the top with a flat blade screwdriver. Remove the power steering pump bracket.
Remove the eight bolts around the perimeter of the lower intake manifold; there are two in each corner with a 13 mm socket and ratchet and an extension is necessary. Using a pair of pliers, collapse the clamp on the thermostat hose going into the water pump; you can do this on either end. It's just that our other one looks pretty rusty so we're to leave that along for now. Slide the clamp off, wiggle the hose to free it up, and then pop it off. Remove the four 10mm bolts on each valve cover with the 10mm socket, ratchet, and extension. Remove the valve cover.
Be sure to mark which is left and which is right as they are different. Repeat these steps on the opposite side. Remove this valve cover as well. Don't forget to remove the vacuum hose before removing your intake manifold. Once the valve covers are off, you can lift up and remove your intake manifold. Lay your intake manifold over. We've actually just removed ours from the parts washer which is why it's a little wet right now.
What we're going to do is remove the old gasket material as well as the gasket sealer along the valley portion of the intake manifold. Then we're going to scrape it all down clean with a razor blade. Now we'll wipe down the gasket surfaces with some solvent. Make sure all the dirt and oil and residue is removed from it. Use a razor blade to scrape any residue off the flat portions in the engine valley here at both the front and the rear.
This here should be there, so just pick those out real quick. Once everything is removed, spray some solvent on a clean paper towel and wipe down both surfaces. Make sure they are free and clean of oil and debris, as we're going to need to use some gasket maker here. Just have a little piece of tape left over from painting our heads that we're going to want to remove. We'll now install our intake manifold gaskets. Make sure they align, and there are two locking pins underneath that will snap into the head and keep that gasket in place. Put some gasket maker into the valley corners here. You'll want to get the corner under the intake gasket and then run it right along. You want to go too thick. Just like that should be fine.
We'll do the same thing in the rear, and this stuff is time sensitive, so make sure your intake manifold is ready to go on. Then set your intake manifold back into place. Ensure that your gaskets are aligned and reinstall the eight bolts, each in each corner of the lower intake manifold. Remember to leave the bolt out for the EGR tube hold down on the back driver side and then tighten down the seven 13mm bolts with a socket, ratchet, and socket extension.
Kind of like our head gasket, we'll want to go from front to back, crossover a little bit, and we tighten down our hardware here to make sure that it doesn't pinch in one corner so that all four sides seal evenly. Tighten the bolts three steps using the sequence shown. The first sequence is the 71 inch-pounds, the second at 106 inch-pounds and the final sequence will torque these bolts to 11 foot-pounds.
Install your new valve cover gasket. It's just have to be stretched in there a little bit. Reinstall your valve cover. Start your four 10mm bolts. We'll do the same thing on the opposite side. Reinstall the other valve cover the same way. We'll reinstall those four 10mm screws as well by hand and then we'll tighten all eight, four on each side with our 10mm socket and ratchet, which will then tighten and torque to 106 inch-pounds.
Realign your EGR tube. You'll need a 22mm wrench to get it started. Line up the bracket for the EGR tube once the valve cover is on and the front is in place. Reinstall the 13mm hold down bolt with a 13mm socket, ratchet, and socket extension. Reattach the fuel lines at the rear of the intake manifold.
Using a 16mm flare wrench, tighten down the fittings on the fuel lines. Using a T20 Torx socket, ratchet, and extension, remove the two T20 Torx screws from your new distributor cap if it came as one piece. Now these are now captured, so you want to be very careful not to loose them. Once those screws are loose, remove your cap.
Then, using a T10 Torx either screwdriver or bit, remove the two Torx screws in the center of the rotor. Once again, these are not captured so be very careful not to loose these. Remove your rotor from the distributor.
Once we've removed the cap and rotor from our new distributor, the correct way to align one of these, we'll line up the eight in this window with the notch and the housing. This will also leave the side of this window lined up with the edge of the cam sensor there. We'll then set it so that this is just about flushed to the back of the engine, move it a little way one way or the other.
Drop it in, line up our tab, and start our bolt a few threads by hand to keep it in place until we start our engine and fine tune it. Set the distributor in with the flat portion of the housing facing the front of the engine. If your timing marks are correct, it should drop right into place. Start the 13mm bolt into the hold down on your distributor. Then we're going to put this down snug, but not fully tight just yet because we want to make sure the truck runs and runs right.
We'll now install the rotor onto the distributor and tighten down the two T20 Torx screws. Now, when you're in time, that tab should be facing roughly towards cylinder one, which is going to be the driver's front and it is now. Now what we're doing here is just a rough timing or base timing, so this should be enough to get the vehicle running.
However, with these distributors, you do need a scan tool in order to get them dialed in perfectly. Plug in the cam position sensor on the back of the distributor now, as it's going to be a lot harder to get out once we put the cap on. Reinstall the distributor cap. Then tighten down your two T20 Torx screws for the T20 Torx spit, ratchet and extension or a torque screwdriver, whichever you prefer. Just don't put these down too tight, because they're only going into plastic, and these are notorious for breaking.
If you did what we did and threaded the bolts back into the intake just so you wouldn't loose them, you're going to want these two studs. These are in the actual aluminum of the lower intake.
This is where we'll reinstall our ignition coil and ignition control module. These are 10mm but for now right, we're just going to get them in there and get them started by hand. We'll then tighten down the two bolts with a 10mm socket, ratchet, and socket extension. Lay the hold down bracket for the wiring harness back into place. Reinstall the two 10mm nuts onto the hold down for the wire harness bracket here. We'll then tighten them down with a 10-mm socket, ratchet and extension.
Reinstall your power steering and A/C bracket. Reinstall all of your 13mm hardware, which you should have marked on a bolt path sort of like this. Don't forget you also have the nut that goes on that stud on the front of the bracket. Tighten down the power steering pump bolts with a 13mm socket and ratchet.
We'll then tighten down the four power steering pump bracket bolts, three bolts and a nut with a 14mm socket and ratchet. We purchased a power steering pulley puller and installer tool set, but the problem is the threads on our installer tool either don't work, or the threads inside of our power steering pump shaft are damaged.
We whipped up a tool with some things we found already in the engine of our truck, and we'll show you what we made. Now our alternator bracket is off since we're doing our cylinder heads. However, if yours is still attached, this process will still work. You'll simply use a 14mm socket and ratchet to remove this nut, which would secure the bracket on. Then you'll use either a pair of vice grips or preferably an E8 inverted torque socket and ratchet to remove the stud from the front of the head.
Once again, since we have our head apart, some of these pieces are already off, but we also used the nut that holds down the ground on a thermostat housing cover. We'll place the thermostat housing cover nut onto the back of the stud that we removed from our head. We'll then take the nut that we removed from this stud and install it backwards as far down as we can.
Then we're going to use the spacer that I had lying around the shop. You could also use a large washer. You want to make sure it's a nice thick one. We'll toss that on there. There's a trolley, so when we tighten down this nut, it won't rotate this. It will just push it in and push our pulley on.
We're just going to apply a thin coat of brake grease onto the shaft here to try to make our pulley go on just a little bit easier. Line up the pulley onto the shaft and install the stud. You want to get that in as tight as you can to start. Run in our 14mm nut into the spacer which is going to help center our pulley. We'll then use one 14mm wrench to hold the stud and the pump shaft in place and another 14mm wrench to tighten down the nut on the installer.
Reinstall the stud into the bank two cylinder head with you E8 inverted torque socket and ratchet. Make sure it bottoms out. Press the clamp for the water pump hose and reinstall it onto its fitting. Then reinstall your alternator bracket. We'll then tighten down all of the 14mm hardware with a socket and ratchet. Reinstall your alternator into the bracket.
Reinstall the two 13mm at the bottom of the alternator. Reinstall the 10mm bolt in the back of the alternator. Tighten it down with your 10mm socket and ratchet. Reconnect all of your electrical connectors and vacuum hoses. Apply some thread sealant to the cooling temp sensor and reinstall it into the bank one cylinder head if you removed it earlier like we did to paint.
Reconnect that electrical connector as well. Reinstall the ground strap at the bottom front of the motor, tighten down the 14mm nut. Reconnect the crank position sensor. Snap the heater hose back into place, clip it back into its plastic retainer as well. We'll also run the other heater line back through its bracket. Don't forget, remove your bolt if you kept it there like we did. Reconnect the heater hose and use a pair of pliers to move the clamp back into position. Reinstall your 10mm bolt. Reconnect the alternator power terminal to the stud on the back of the alternator. We'll resecure this with the 13mm washer and nut.
Reinstall your throttle cables. Remember to hook them into the bracket over the AC compressor. Loop them around. The one with the barrel end like this goes into the square slot. Then open the throttle body blade. Install by looping at around into its slot, and flipping it back into place.
Then send the round cruise control cable in, lock that in, and just snap that hook back over to tab. Install the vacuum boost to line on the rear of the intake manifold. I'm going to use locking jaw pliers this time to compress the clamp. That can be a little bit easier sometimes, depending on what style. Put the A/C compressor back into its bracket, and reinstall the four bolts and then tighten them down with a 13mm socket, ratchet, and extension.
Reconnect the connector on the A/C compressor clutch and the two connectors on the back. Reinstall the tensioner and the 13mm bolt in the center. Don't forget to line up that tab on the back with its whole in the bracket and tighten down the 13mm bolt with a socket and ratchet.
Reinstall the serpentine belt around the crank shaft. The right side, the driver side of the belt will go up and over the water pump, down and under the power steering pulley, up and over the AC compressor, under the idler pulley at the top and the passenger side will come up over the tensioner. Hold the tensioner with the drive of a 3/8th ratchet and rotate it counterclockwise to release the tension, so you can slide it over the alternator pulley.
Ensure that the belt is routed correctly. Release the tension and remove your ratchet. Using a pair of locking jaw pliers, compress the clamp on the upper radiator hose. If you removed yours fully from the radiator, we're going to install the radiator side first. Release the clamp, compress the clamp for the thermostat side. We left ours on the housing. Reinstall that hose as well as its clamp.
Reinstall the upper fan shroud. If you remember ours was missing two bolts, so we'll only be reinstalling five. Yours should have seven. Don't forget throughout the power wire back over from your battery. Place the coil plug back onto the ignition coil and then the passenger rear on the distributor is marked C for your coil so we'll reinstall that line there. The rest of them are pretty self-explanatory. It goes six, four, two, eight on the passenger side.
We'll reinstall those wires in the same order and then connect them to the corresponding spark plug. Remember the passenger bank at the front is cylinder two followed by four, six, eight, while the driver side starts with cylinder one and goes three, five, seven. Once all the wires are plugged in, we'll route them along to their appropriate plugs. Now your distributor cap is marked on the opposite side so repeat this process and install the wires over there as well.
Reinstall the upper intake and the thumb screw. Reconnect your PCV breather hose. Reinstall the mass airflow and intake air temp sensors. Install the air box lid and snap it down into place. Reconnect your negative battery terminal and tighten it back down with a 8mm socket and ratchet or an 8mm wrench. Once you've refilled the coolant and changed your oil, you're ready to start your vehicle.
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Tools used
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In this video, we have the cylinder heads off of the small block Chevy 350 with a 5.7-liter Vortec from our '96 Sierra. We're going to show you how to overhaul the head or rework it by removing all of your valves and replacing the stems, as well as regrinding or lapping the valves to make sure they seal nice and tight against the cylinder head. This process can also be used to change your valve springs, keepers, and retainers, although we did reuse our original ones.
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Here are the items you'll need for this repair: valve spring removal tool, engine assembly lube, valve carbon cleaning solution, valve grinding compound, orange engine enamel paint, 12mm impact socket, valve grinding tool, magnet, small hammer, rubber mallet, side cutters, brake cleaner, wire brush, paper towels, painter’s tape, razor blade, drill, drill bit, piece of hose, safety goggles, dust mask, gloves
We'll remove the valve springs and valves from our cylinder head. What I've done to keep these organized, again, because everything needs to go back exactly where it came from, is I've labeled cylinder one exhaust on this cup and filled it with a valve carbon cleaning solution. We'll remove all this, allow it to soak, remove everything else, finish cleaning our head, paint it, grind our valves, change our valve seals, and then reassemble.
There are a variety of different valve spring compresses tools available, as well as some do-it-yourself methods that work just fine, especially on these simplistic motors. This tool is a universal overhead valve style and works on a wide variety of vehicles, so we'll show you how this one works. Any other valve spring tool should work just fine.
We'll hook the jaws into the lowest coil we can. Spin the compressor down and compress the spring. Now if your valve retainers stay stuck in there's like ours did, just give it a sharp little tap with a hammer, it should free them right up. Using a magnet or pick, do not put your fingers in here as these tools can fail, and if they do, that spring has got a good bit of tension on it, it is not somewhere you want your hands to be. Collapse the spring until you have good access to the keepers there. I like using a magnet, just snag them, pull them out. These are two pieces, so remove each side. If you're reusing the old ones, be sure to keep them organized.
We'll now very carefully and slowly back off the tool. Once the pressure is off the spring, we'll remove the tool. Remove the spring and spring retainer. Those don't have to go in the solution, but we can clean them up a little bit while they're out. Push down, lift up, and remove your valves. This engine, like most others, has a smaller exhaust valve than an intake valve. Now we're take that valve, drop it in the solution, make sure it's deep enough to cover all that carbon buildup. We'll leave these to soak while we pull apart the rest of our springs and valves. The process is the same on both the intake and exhaust side, so just go right along and keep them all organized.
Just to show you the importance and the fact that this stuff really works, the valve on your right has been soaking for about 10 minutes now. I haven't scrubbed it or anything other than just swirled the cup around a little bit, and you can see the difference in cleanliness and buildup between that and a valve that we just removed. All the right keeps to make sure that our engine runs smooth and free.
Now our valve train is removed from our cylinder head. We're going to clean out the combustion chamber and the gasket surface, spray it all down, mask it off, and repaint it GM orange. Now, we're going to use a wire brush and some solution to go ahead and clean all the dirt, debris, grease and carbon off of the gasket surface and out of the combustion chambers. It's very important much like your ports that you don't use power tools or heavy abrasives to do this, as this is a machined flat surface.
Unless you're taking this to get decked or machined flat, you're going to want to make sure that you leave all the stock material intact while only removing the dirt, debris, and buildup. Don't be afraid to get in there and clean out the ports a little bit more, especially now that you've removed the valves. There's a lot more room to get in there and clean. Once the surfaces are cleaned, mask off gasket surfaces to the head gasket, the intake, and exhaust, as well as the topside where the valve train is, so we can paint our heads in the original orange color, make them look good as new. Once all that's on, just trim the edges nice and tight with a sharp razor blade. The only areas we're really concerned about are the combustion chamber that we just cleaned, the gasket surfaces, the cylinder head, as well as the intake and exhaust manifolds. The intake side, we can just mask off completely, because the manifold will sit on there so we won't actually see any of the unpainted surfaces.
If you really want to, you can carefully tape off just the ports where the gasket touches on the exhaust side, or you can mask it all off, really just a matter of preference. We'll just set those up the same way we're doing this. There are a few options once you've masked off all the ports as far as the spark plug holes are concerned. You could use your spark plugs if you're replacing them anyway, or if you're reusing them and don't want to have to clean off the porcelain and the contact, you can just take some rips of a clean paper towel, wad them up, put them in the threads there to keep the paint out of the combustion chamber.
The last thing we need to do before paint, since we've already cleaned off and degreased our entire cylinder head, is to mask off the topside as well as the bolts. We've masked off our tool cart, and our engine has already been cleaned and degreased, and now we're going to spray it with some Chevy orange engine enamel paint. This paint is designed for the high temperatures created when an engine is running. Be sure to wear proper safety equipment, and only do this in a well ventilated and warm area. Allow about 10 to 15 between coats for the paint to flash before laying another. We're probably going to do two or three coats on this to get it looking nice. Yours may require more or less depending on the condition of the steel and the type of paint you use. For the last coat of paint, we're going to go on a little thicker and let it sit a lot longer.
Again, this is a cylinder head. Don't be worried about imperfections in the paint, runs, fish eyes, the fact that you can see the texture of the rusted head underneath. It's really just to pretty it up a little bit, it's not like you're painting a body panel. Put the last coat on nice and thick to make sure we cover up any of the light spots. While the paint on the other side is drying, we'll redo this cylinder head the same way we did that one. Now we've got our bank two cylinder head, all stripped down. We'll allow our valves to soak in the meantime. Depending on the condition of your valves, the soak times will vary. We're going to let them sit while both heads are stripped and being painted. Take them out, clean them off, and if they need to, we'll soak them again, likely overnight. To give you an idea of why this is important, look at all the dirt and debris floating around just from the valves soaking without us actually scrubbing it or cleaning anything off. You can imagine how much dirt and debris really comes off of here when you wire them down.
We'll repeat this process on the rest of our valves. Now, we'll grind the valves to make sure that they seat and seal nicely to our cylinder head. You want to get some valve grinding compound onto the backside of the valve. We'll put a little engine assembly lube down into the valve guide to make sure that our valve moves nice and freely. Suction your valve grinding tool to it. You may need to wet the grinding tool to get it to suction to the valve appropriately, and then we're just going to spend some time working it back and forth. Make sure you rotate it around a little so that it grinds in in a full 360 degrees, because the valves do rotate while they're running. Once in a while, pull out the valve and wipe it off.
That is starting to cut in some, but we want three distinct layers in the bevel of the valve and the seat to make sure that it's ground in and sealing nicely. As with all things, there's always a faster way of doing this. We're going to coat the valve stem in grease, and some more valve grinding compound on the seat of the valve. Send it through. In our case, we'll be using a drill bit and a piece of rubber hose. Slide the rubber hose over the drill bit and the end of the valve stem, and then run it with the drill and tap it up and down while you do this. Add compound as necessary. This is especially important that you don't use too much with this method, because you'll just send it flying everywhere.
Occasionally remove the hose and the valve, clean it off, and take a look at your cut. You can see there's no strong cut definition to the uncut valve, it's just blurred coloring, there's no obvious layers that was on our cut valve while we do have some minor pitting we'll want to clean up. You can distinctly see the three cuts. The same is true of the seats.
We'll repeat this process on all of our valves, clean the head out thoroughly again to remove any compounds from the head, and then reinstall our valves. Wash out all of the valve seats and ports one more time to get all the valve grinding compound out of there. That stuff is pretty aggressive and it is not something you want running through this engine. Using a pair of side cutters, pop all of the valve stem seals off of the head. We'll start with our cylinder one exhaust valve. All we're going to do here is take our freshly cleaned and ground valve and I'm secretly going to clean it because I haven't done that yet. Place that valve into the guide, it's okay to let that sit down a little. We'll put some assembly lube on there. This is because we've cleaned all the oil and residual residue ut of the head by taking it apart and cleaning it with our mineral spirits. This lubricant is just going to make sure that the part is lubricated until engine oil gets through there and starts doing its job. We'll get a thin coat on there, and a little more on the top. That's going to help seat our new gasket, which we'll carefully slide onto the stem.
We'll then take a 12mm impact socket or anything else you have that fits over there nice on the edges and not the rubber portion of the seal. A rubber mallet. Just tap that on until it bottoms out. Once that new seal is in, we can push our valve up, reinstall our spring and retainer, clamp them down with our spring tool. We'll then slide our valve keepers into the opening on the retainer. Lift up to engage them and then let the pressure off our spring. We now have a properly sealed and functioning valve again. We'll repeat this process all the way down the cylinder head until we have everything back in place. You can now reinstall the cylinder onto this side of the block.
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