A few tools/parts showed up today. Amazingly, the stuff I ordered online Saturday night from Beisan Systems was delivered by the mailman along with my ODBC cable and software from Romania. I'll probably need a helping hand when the times come to use it.
Speaking of tools, I decided to pick up a 1/4" drive torque wrench since my current ones (3/8" and 1/2" drive) don't go down to the values needed for putting a lot of the covers back on the 4.6.
I like Snap On and have been using these for the last 10 years.
The 3/8" has a usable range of 20 to 100 lb/ft and the 1/2" from 100 to 250 lb/ft. Neither has ever been calibrated, but then I have never dropped them or abused them, so I suspect they are still pretty close.
Looking at Snap On's current offerings in 1/4", they have a 10 to 50 in/lb and a 40 to 200 in/lb in the click type, and a 24 to 240 in/lb in their TECHWRENCH digital series. I found a brand new one of those on eBay for almost half price, so I went with that.
I worked a little on the gasket surfaces this afternoon. Man those old upper timing cover gaskets are so hard and brittle that they break off in chunks. I'll do a similar test on the timing chain guides, but I agree with the consensus here that I should just go ahead and replace them all.
I try to keep all the pieces neatly organized for re-assembly. Whenever possible, I put the fasteners back where they were prior to removing something, and in cases where that is not possible, I arrange them so that I can easily tell where they go.
Finally, we had quite a but of snow last night, so here's an external shot of the shop since you guys have only seen the inside up until now. Oh, and that's the old cracked radiator you see leaning against the wall next to the rear door.
