My little build thread
 

Well heres my Aleros story. My bestfriends dad bought in new in 2001. He drove it till 2006 when his son started driving it, then in 2009 his younger son started driving it, then in 2012 my friend got and drove it till 2013 and it sat for 3 months till I bought it in January. I did basic maintenance and all was good. Till I started noticing my coolant disappearing. It overheated from no coolant one day and I decided to do head gasket and limg. Well since we had the heads in front of us we sent them to get magnafluxed, hot bathed along with valve covers and intake manifolds. and they had 12 cracks in them, so I got new heads through the machine shop. Right now its getting close to completion and I cant wait to see how much better she runs. Now some pics. Not in any order just some random ones of my parts and stuff.

3.5 TB i plan to put on soon

Early teardown progress. Intake runners were disgusting.

Sending them to the machine shop.

New heads. Almost no casting flaws and look really nice.

Painted LIM silver and it matches the heads really good.

Painted valve covers Mopar red.

How she sits right now. Looks really clean. Im gonna paint UIM red also.

Nice. That's going to look even better when the whole thing is finished.

Real clean

Well shit. I was putting the fuel rail on and my little brother dropped a screw down the holes where the injectors go...Any ideas without tearing it back down?
Also would you say its safe to reuse my gaskets?

i would be mad... lol


depends what kind of gaskets. sometimes you can re use them if they were just put on but car was not ran...

and uhhh... a magnet, if not, tear it down.

try a pen magnet, you may get lucky and catch it

LOL that's so wrong... Looks good keep up the updating.

Got it with a snap on magnet screwdriver.:haha:
I got exhaust all done, fuel rail and other miscalenous stuff. Im hoping to have her finished tommorrow. And a couple quick questions for you guys.
What is the plastic part around the wheel I think its splash shield but Im not sure and mine has a hole in it right where my intake is going:(
And if I flush my coolant system can I run green stuff and not dex cool?

Yes, I run Prestone all makes/all models and it's fine. Just have to make sure all that Dexcool crap is out of the system. I've been running the grenn fora few years and it's fine. Just do the mix with distilled water, not tap

Buy a NEW water pump and Thermo. I've seen so many people overlook or just not bother replacing $50 in parts to "save money"

Well I had the pulley system allready. Putting upper intake bolts in back middle one stopped torquing at 14.5 ftlbs. I was like what the hell, its supposed to torque at 18 ftlbs. So I thought its stripped. I took them all out and looked and the threading on lower intake is all gone and there is a huge ass crack around the bolt hole..So Im gonna buy the stage 1 lower intake from Ben. When I go home I will post a pic of the intake. A chunk of it literally fell off...

So they bathed em and they cracked or they were magnafluxed cracked before? That kind of sucks.

They were all good when I got em. But I guess torquing them to that high of specs puts to much pressure. Ben said to just tighten it by hand and dont torque it.


Needless to say this car has got me heated. New heads, new lower intake, all new gaskets, new struts, new tires and i still cant drive it. But its a good learning experience and it will be a great car once its done. For now Im driving a 2006 sonata 3.3. Anyone else ever drive those? They haul ass!

Those sonatas arent that fast. Lol terrible luck though, but yes the uim/lim is very brittle. You have to be careful.

yup, that sucks.... 12 ft pounds or 144 inch pounds is all it needs to hold the seal just fine