David Riker wrote:
>
> The question is, how do you get at the bolts on the
> bottom of the manifolds, or what order should these parts be removed and
> replaced? Any tricks of the trade? It has to stay origional enough to pass
> California Smog.
Having just done this I can help. First go into the backyard and practice
your swearing. Get very good at it because you might have to swear a nut
or two off. After that I soaked all of the bolts with BP Blaster for about
1 week. I would spray them in the morning and again at night and again
before I went to bed. The hard ones to get off are the long ones in between
the intake and exhaust manifold. What I did was I got two craftmans open
end wrenches. Get the one that is 9/16" on one end and 1/2" on the other
end. Get out your bench grinder and grind off the extra metal on each side
of the open end wrench. This will give you skinny wrench. Now take the
wrench and put it in a bench vise, heat it up and bend it back. Now
take the second wrench grind it down and bend it forward. Now you have two
tools that can be used all over you car. They come in handy for the
lower carb bolt, the front prop shaft bolt and of course the two nuts
between the manifolds. You also might want to take a third wrench, leave
it straight and just grind off the extra metal on both ends giving you
a straight skinny wrench.
If you use the two skinny bent wrench you will find that you can just
fit them between the manifolds and slowly get off those nuts. When I
reassembled the parts I used new studs (brass I think) along with anti-seize
compound, just in case I have to take it about again.
I highly recommend a couple of skinny and bent wrenches. They fit into the
smallest
of places where the factory midget was used to assemble the car.
Bill Gilroy
77 Midget
90 Shar-Pei
Assorted mangled, but handy wrenches
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