Yes, John. We're in the South. It's GONNA be humid. If only this were NM or AZ...if only.

*shrugs* The parts aren't for my car, so it doesn't bother me. Oh, uh...sorry Arc.

Hey Rick, if you get this in time, gran Grid too. I've got it for the PS3, and it's a fun game.

too late. By the time you posted, I was already asleep. I woke up this morning about 7 and got here just before 10. We're now waiting for the engine to cool. Where you at?

Hey, Arc, answer your phone.

Thanks for taking all the pics, Arc.

Looks like me and Slick are goin to the LIM again tomorrow. Darn it. Burning coolant, moments of KR, hesitation, operating at 210-230*...Not pretty. He's thinkin that the LIM rplcmt didnt take. Either the gaskets failed immediately, were installed wrong, or (on the VERY remote side) that something warped. New gaskets, new torque wrench, and new start in the morning.

Thanks to Slick for opening his house to the lot of us. Thanks Ace and Arc for coming in to visit. I'm VERY sorry that the entire day was spent wrenching. Not very much fun for yall. The three of yall made for a very fun and relaxing day, regardless of the result on the car. I will be posting a write up with Arc's pics in the near future.

Good news: the smoke machine we installed is working perfectly! HIGH FIVE.

Maybe we lost Rick in his own manifolds. I did tell him it was dangerous to be up there.

Arc, you should have seen it later. On our way back from dinner, I was following, and in the middle of the highway it suddenly let out a couple massive jets of smoke. I seriously thought his car just finished breaking itself. Worst smoke of the whole day.

yeah, pretty bad. I was thinking about it last night, since I couldnt get to sleep. This was about midnight or so, and the thought goes like this here:

Remember that corrosion that Arc had called "engine cheese"?

Remember how myself and Slick had dug into the LIM a little to remove some of that corrosion?

Remember how we didnt use to RTV to fully seal around the water passages and such?

My thought is that gouging that was done was allowing coolant to pass by the gasket and seep into the combustion chamber.

Problems with my theory: How did the coolant get by the air intake seals? Not much cleaning was done there. Also: why is my car running hot like that?

Here in a few more minutes, I'm heading outside to remove all but the LIM, waiting for John to get back from church. During re-install, I'll be switching back to the original t-stat I had in there, hoping that will address the overheating issue, but with low expectations.

If only I had fallen into the manifolds, I'll be able to walk around the manifolds and the combustion chamber and SEE what's going on with the car. Poor Colleen.

Just pulled the UIM. There was oil all OVER that LIM. In the aft passenger corner was enough oil to drown my pinky. Also, there was oil under every air passage under the UIM gasket between the LIM and the HV3. Yep, got pics.

Next question: although the smoke smelled like coolant, how much oil was in that smoke? It was nighttime when we noticed the vast majority of smoking, so color differentiation was impossible.

Next up, I think, should be to pull plugs and see what they look like. John thinks we should retorque the UIM and see what that does. We'll see.

Froman and Tengus from CGP dropped by today to claim the tuner and found us wrenching away. Tengus had noticed that the PCV was still in my original UIM. Put that in to my new UIM cleaned all the oil and such out of the UIM and LIM, reinstalled everything, and all is well now. You would not BELIEVE the roar from the intake now, it sounds like a BEAST in there. No codes, no smoke, no performance issues, just running hot (operating temp is 210-215). Let the car cool off, replace this new t-stat with my old one, take it to the zoo while scanning, and hope that all is right with the car.

So the old PCV was spewing oil into the manifolds?

Glad you got it figured out. I had fun, even if it was all car stuff and just a few moments of pancakes. No worries, I'm more than used to that by now, haha. Nice to meet you and Ace finally, we should do this again. Sorry for my crappy pictures, I didn't take many cause I was too intent on watching.

Nice to see we all share a good sense of humor.

Sound like you guys had quite an educational weekend..Glad you got Coleen straightened out there Rick...hope all you guys will be able to make it when I come south again.

We decided at dinner that we'll get together again in the near future, and when we do, wrenching will be strictly forbidden.

Well, we had totally forgotten to move the actual pcv from the old mani to the new one. That's where our vacuum leak came from. The upper was just sucking in air and oil droplets from the crankcase and making hell for us.

After moving the pcv over it was a lot quieter and quit smoking. Seems to run just a tad hotter, but it's behaving itself.

From what I remember, you guys were saying, "Oh, we can't use it, it won't fit," not that you forgot it. :p