[urq] Damn intake manifold

[Thatcher Hubbard]

Hey everyone,

  In the neverending process of trying to EFI my car, I've hit the
8000th of 30,000,000 snags.  Two days before moving to Seattle, I
finally got my entire system wired and was quite close to test firing
the car when...I discovered that there is no way to get the stock
throttle body back onto the IM with a fuel rail in place.  Some people
say it should be close, and they may be using different stuff, but it
is not.  I would have to shave a minimum of 1" of height off of the
injector + fuel rail combination to get it to clear.

  My solution rather was to get another IM that puts the throttle body
in a different place, like facing outwards toward the fender well. 
Having obtained one of those, and a throttle body that will not only
bolt up but accepts my throttle position sensor, I'm close again.

  The problem now is the existing IM.  I've gotten 5 of the 8 bolts
off with it in the car, they weren't even that bad.  But the bolts
(which you would think would be hardened) are easy to spin out of, and
I've done that on two of them, and they are quite shallow, so they are
essentially useless.  There is not enough room to get a hammer in
there and drive an oversized 7mm hex in there, so it looks to me like
I will have to take the head off (and waste a new set of OEM head
bolts that had a mere 200 miles on them, not to mention a new head
gasket) to get these final bolts.  And, as anyone here knows, getting
the head off these is a very involved affair.  So this is a call for
anyone with a creative idea on how to get these damn bolts out without
taking the head off.  There is not enough room to get a drill down
there, and you can't see the bolt heads without using a mirror anyway,
so even if there was, that would seem to be a poor idea.