Michael Stoliker's Journal

I pulled the head off the Tomato Friday night. It took me almost four hours to get things completely apart and stored away for the night. The most time was spent trying to get the head off. It just didn't want to budge. I decided to try the old rope trick and fed about 5 feet of old-fashioned cotton rope into the number 3 cylinder and cranked the engine. The head popped up as neat as you please. I then struggled for another 15 minutes tugging the head up the studs.

In the morning, I got out the extra large paint roller tray that I use to clean parts, stood the head in it and filled the combustion chambers with mineral spirits. Before I finished filling the last chamber the first two were already leaking down. The best cylinder took almost 15 minutes to completely leak down, the others had been dry for 14 minutes. Fortunately, I had another head. A quick test of this head showed it to be in great shape.

The rest of the afternoon was spent scraping gaskets and cleaning parts.

While I had the intake manifold off I took the opportunity to examine the Emissions Valve to see if it needed a new diaphragm. When I removed the retainer spring and popped the cap there was nothing inside. How the heck does this work? No spring, no diaphragm, no valve...Oh wait, there's something blocking the hole...OK, this doesn't work, it just fills a hole in the manifold. Why not just shove a cork in it?