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• Finished with the belts today — tensioned them too.
• Got the bolt unstuck on the thermostat housing. Yay!
• Cleaned the power steering pump. It’s nice and shiny now.
• Power steering hoses cleaned and reattached.
• Power steering reservoir installed.
• Changed air filter element.

Just a little left to go. I want to drive my car!

I’m going to be slightly behind schedule now because the thermostat cover had a seized screw on it and I need that screw to purge air from the coolant system. Other than that, I’m making good progress:

• All the V-belts have been removed. (It did take longer because I had to unbolt the A/C and the alternator to get enough slack; the Bentley manual only said to loosen the bolts.)
• Cam timing belt removed and replaced. The cam belt covers were filthy and took 1.5 hours to clean with tons of elbow grease, engine degreaser, and hot water. But they look like new now.
• Water pump replaced. The Ultimate Garage supplied a gasket that was much sturdier than the stock paper thin one.
• Replaced the alternator belt. I actually got all new belts from the dealer since I figured it was such a pain already to get to the belts (drained coolant, remove radiator, remove ancillaries…)
• P/S reservoir (resvoir? res^e^voir? res^er^voir? — haha Ruban) removed. The hoses were completely caked with grease and there wasn’t enough space to remove it from the top. Fortunately, we were able to fish it through to the underside of the car to remove the hoses from it. I’m still debating on getting new hoses from the dealer because my mail order came with different hoses.

What’s in store for tomorrow?

• Clean and inspect P/S hoses and attach them to the new reservoir with new clamps.
• Finish the remaining P/S and A/C V-Belts. Actually, the alternator pulley looks like it should be replaced, but I’m gonna be cheap about it. Hope this doesn’t come back to haunt me later when I’m stranded on the side of the road with a dead charging system.
• Install most of the new hoses except for the one that connect to the thermostat housing.
• Valve job and new valve cover gasket. Clean the valve cover and surrounding areas of grease/dirt buildup.
• New spark plugs, air filter, fuel filter.
• Throttle cable.

I hope that’s it.

So far I’ve removed the radiator and several of the coolant hoses. I’ve also removed the distributor, ignition rotor and the power steering belt. Several preliminary notes:

• Drain the coolant outside the garage — even with a catch pan, stuff still gets everywhere.
• Flush out the radiator thoroughly after removing it. Backflush it, turn it sideways and flush it, lay it flat on the ground…it all helps to get the years of sediments out of there.Clean the engine thoroughly before attempting to remove so many things from your car. Since the valve cover gasket is badly deteriorated, oil has leaked over everything, including the A/C compressor. Trying to find the tension adjuster bolts and loosening the drive belt has been a major pain.
• Being methodical and super anal in organization is a good thing(TM).
• Sandwich bags with labels is great for keeping small items.
• Make sure there is plenty of space in the garage to keep all the parts you’ve taken off the car.
• Finally, having the right tool for the job is worth the tool’s weight in gold, saved frustration, saved knuckle skin, and saved toes.