emma@uw-june (Joe Pfeiffer) (09/12/83)
Wanted to put out a note on a number of items here... Somebody was curious a while ago about a backfiring problem. I just found a backfiring cause I wasn't aware of on my Toyota -- a leaky head gasket. Realized it when I noticed water was disappearing and not ending up on the ground. Replacing the head gasket brought me to my next item. While service manuals are wonderful books, they shouldn't be trusted without cross-reference any more than any other book. I decided to be fancy and used a torque wrench to tighten down my exhaust manifold. The torque specs in the book turned out to be tighter than the standard for these particular bolts by a factor of 3! Which brings up the next item. Has anybody out there ever had any good luck with an easy-out (screw extractor)? Next bolt I twist off, I think I'll save a lot of time and effort and just buy a Heli-coil to start with. I would have wound up with a much neater result, saved over a week of effort, and not broken two easy-outs and a carbide-tip drill. One last note, unrelated to the above. A question appeared a while ago about "if foreign cars are so good, why is everybody selling them?" Well, my Toyota is a terrific little car. It gets good gas mileage, is reliable (this is the first head gasket it's gone through, at 93,000 miles), has very comfortable seating, good head room... they went out and targeted a particular function and did a terrific job of hitting it. Why will my Toyota be for sale soon? Because I have a 1966 Dodge Charger in the back which I'm rebuilding (how could its prior owner have hated it so much? What could it have ever done to him?) and it's one heck of a lot more fun. -Joe P.