Installing new cylinder heads - Progress on a cold weekend

We're glad that we don't do this for a living because if we did, we'd starve. We know that people do jobs like this every day but we have to re-learn a lot, given that we haven't changed marine cylinder heads in about 10 years and even then, they were familiar GM V-8 engines.  This time, it's a Chrysler 360 V-8 and there are some differences.

When we left last week, we had the outboard starboard exhaust manifold up against the water tank and hanging from two studs.

We decided to think about how to remove it and during the week came up with a nautical solution that worked perfectly. It involved putting a dock line through the manifold and then suspending it from a crossbar. That took the pressure off the those two remaining studs. The result was that we got that outboard manifold off. Then we could move this project along a little.

It took another hour to remove the two valve covers. These things might have been on there for 30 or more years and it took some patience to finally get them off. They looked good inside, however. No sludge, so we'll clean them up and reinstall them when we finally get the new heads installed.

The intake manifold bolts (all 12 of them) came out but if we hadn't had the offset box wrenches that we bought at Harbor Freight, we 'd still be down there trying to do it with straight box wrenches. The angle of the bolts was really hard to reach and using sockets was out of the question.

With the bolts out, we tried to get the manifold off but it wouldn't budge. By then, we were cold and tired and we've learned in the past that it's sometimes better to quit and try again another day.

It's amazing what a good night's sleep will do because when we arrived on Sunday, we used a small crowbar to tap around the edges of the manifold. It began to move a little and we were able to lift it right off the engine.

We took the carb off (should have done that first) and put the manifold in the car so we could take it home and scrape the old gasket material off and clean it up a little.

Since we were on a roll, next we removed the rocker arm assembly and the pushrods from the inboard side of the engine. We laid all of those parts out by the numbers because they are supposed to go back into their original positions.

After we get the inboard head off, our plan was to begin on the other head but now think that's not the best way to do it. It appears that a better way is to replace the head on in inboard side and reinstall the rocker arms, pushrods and valve cover as well. That will keep debris out of that side of the engine and give us some practice before we begin the outboard head. That outboard side is up against the water tank and will be much more difficult to do. We'll approach that one knowing exactly what wrench to use and that will be helpful since getting that head off is going to require doing things at least partially by touch and feel.

Here's some of what it looked like this weekend.