It’s been a long time. Too long. At the end of Part 9, I mentioned that I had cross threaded the crank bolt. What happened there was when I used the steering wheel puller to remove the crank pulley mount, I didn’t leave the bolt in place (it doesn’t interfere with the pulley mount), and the threaded rod of the steering wheel puller mangled the first few threads. In an attempt to make it easy to turn the motor over during the timing chain and head gasket jobs, I wanted to put the crank bolt back in with some shims (to ensure it wasn’t bottoming out on the back of the crank threads), and when trying to thread this in through the damaged threads, I made matters worse.

—Begin Rant—

No big deal though, I just needed another crank bolt. I figured I could pick up a few other parts as well, so I placed an order at gmpartsgiant.com on 8/16. I almost immediately got an email back telling me to go to the site because there was some issue. I did so, and was sold that the crank bolt was out of stock, and they would have to order it from the main GM facility. I said OK. 10 days later, I contact them (8/26). I’m told the parts will be in by 8/30 and shipped the next day after that. And so on. For a total of 4 additional contacts by me, and 4 additional times that I was lied to about the availability. I was flat out told that the “main GM facility” was that hold up.

I went to a local dealership and was told they would have to order the part form the main GM facility and that it would be in by Thursday (this was a Monday). OK, now I have 2 orders for this $4 part. Whatever. I get a phone call on Thursday at lunchtime telling me that my part was in. Based on this, I have to assume I was being lied to by gmpartsgiant.com. And yes, I am using this blog as my soapbox to explain exactly how I was treated and what I thought of it. I will not use them again, and I suggest no one else does.

—End Rant—

So now I’ve got a crank bolt in good shape. I measured it and checked the thread pitch. It’s M12 1.5. I had to order a tap, as I didn’t have one that size. That showed up a few days ago. I coated it with motor oil and went to work:

As there weren’t more than a couple of damaged threads, it cut easily. I cleaned it out with some brake cleaner and gave the full length a run through to make sure all the threads were in good shape and cleaned it out again. You can see from what was on the tap that there wasn’t much damage to be repaired:

I then had to press the crank pulley mount back on. The service manual calls for a special tool, but really all you need is a piece of flat steel and the crank bolt. The puller I used to take it off would have worked fine, but it was just a bit too thick compared to how much bolt I had to work with to start. I couldn’t find anything suitable in the shop, until I came across a Cisco 2900 series 1U router rack ear. No, that wasn’t a typo:

While it wasn’t strong enough to get it on all the way, it got it on far enough that I could get the steering wheel puller with the crank bolt through it back on there.

And there is is pressed on all the way, with the steering wheel puller still in place. It’s worth mentioning that you don’t just press this back on….you need to put some sealant on the woodruff key on the crank, lubricate the seal you are pushing into with motor oil, and clean and lube the mating surfaces before you start pressing.

And there we have it. The crank pulley is back on the pulley mount. The crank bolt is back in. It’s properly torqued (100 nm). I can finally move on.

The rest of today’s work was nothing special. I did realize that the loud exhaust I had mentioned earlier wasn’t some loud aftermarket garbage. I wasn’t paying much attention to where and what the noise sounded like with my quick test start, but upon further checking realized that the gasket supplied in my kit was incorrect. Even listening to the video should have been enough to figure this out. What can I say? I’m not the brightest guy.

The exhaust manifold has small channels between the 1-2 and 3-4 ports, and these were not being covered properly by the new gasket. I replaced that with an appropriate one and all is well. I then loaded the accessories back in, put on the belt and fan:

Another test start and all went well. I took the opportunity to bleed the power steering, which had mostly leaked out from being disconnected. I refilled it, went from lock to lock with the steering wheel, holding it at full lock for a second or two about 4 times. Then the power steering reservoir was again low, and full of foam:

That’s pretty much what you should expect. The power steering pump is noisy when this is going on as well. Give it 15 minutes for the foam to go away, re-fill, and do it again. By the 3rd time, you should be pretty much set, and that was the case here.

I figured we were in good enough shape to put the air cleaner and intake pieces back on, change the oil, fill up the cooling system with water, and run it up to temperature:

You can see some smoke from the engine compartment (oil and grease from my filthy hands burning off of the exhaust header), some water and steam coming out of the exhaust (this truck hasn’t been up to temperature in nearly a year, so everything is soggy), and an ABS light on in the cab.

It runs great. I drove it up and down the driveway a bit, and it has good power off the line. It smoothed out even more after this video as it ran longer. The ABS light even went off after going forward and using the brakes.

Now I’m waiting for it to cool off. I’ll be dumping the water I put in the cooling system, refilling and doing the same again. Jobs up next off the top of my head include repairing or replacing the blower motor (it works, but it sounds like it has something stuck in it and/or bad bearings), repairing the bottom 3rd door latch and putting a handle on the 3rd door, and repairing the rust spots on the rear sides of the cab.