[V8] overhaul progress report

[d saad]

I have my motor back from the machine shop, and it is back in the
car.
I still need to do all the wiring and plumbing, but things are
coming along.
With any luck it will be running this week.

And it only took about 3 hours to get it mated to the tranny!. I finally
decided I had to remove the left exhaust manifold to get it it in, and boy
does that last manifold nut suck to get back on.
I bet I spent an
hour on just that one item.

So far, I have only cheaped out on
two things. One was the the cover plate over the valley. I could not bring
myself to spend $106 for a new gasket, so even though the old one is in
pretty bad shape, I tried to seal it up with some gasket stuff. And I
probably should have replaced the two O-rings for the water pipe on the
heads. Both of these things can be fixed later if I need to.

And a tip of the day:

When I replaced my heater hoses a few
years ago, I wrapped all the metal pipe ends where the hoses go with
teflon tape. I really don't remember why I did it now, but they all did
not leak at all, and the tip part is that the hoses came right off without
having to un-stick them from the pipe. Given the price of these hoses, it
is worth it to treat them gently.
I will now do this for all coolant
hoses.

Dave