Hi all!

Long thread, haven't posted in a while.

Hadn't popped my hood in a while, on a car with 300k… driving home, come up a hill, smoke puffs out of engine bay😬, found out the coolant tank cracked and i lost all coolant.


Overheated the engine, blew the head gasket compression went down by 20 psi in all cylinders, now at about 150psi all around.

luckily, found an engine with 87,000 miles close by for $540. Jacked up the car, on a hill so I only needed 2 jack stands. Lowered the subframe, realized I could have kept the harness on the engine if I undid it at the computer😂, and I made the mistake of unscrewing the brake lines at the abs thinking they lowered with the subframe, then started taking the engine off

airjacks make everything so easy



resurfaced the flywheel

Made my own clutch alignment tool!

put the engine on the subframe and got it all in, new clutch, timing belt + water pump, exhaust manifold flexpipe got cut off and replaced due to cracking.

Started it up, made some valve noise, ended up being fine after it warmed up. Triple checked the coolant system, don't need to overheat another engine. Now its running great and has no problems. Feels like it has more power too, gonna do a compression test. Keeping the old cars alive!

Moral of the story, check your fluids.