I keep having other projects come up, but I have been trying to get back to my Civic. I extracted a broken bolt, installed the remaining Helicoils, and removed a ridiculous amount of metal shavings. I had hoped to get my engine running last Saturday, but it rained. I bought a $100 awning, but I spent a couple of hours trying to find long cotton swabs, and finally ordered some from Amazon to clean the oil passages.
I cleaned out all of the shavings that I found, blew oil all over with my compressor (hopefully getting some shavings. Everyone said that it would work!), changed the oil in my Accord and Mom's Camry, poured all of the old oil on the Civic head, drained it out, disposed of it, wiped down the mating surface, shielded the head and sprayed carburator cleaner on the mating surfaces, and today I realized that I needed to clean the valve cover. I sprayed it with carburator cleaner and took care of a couple of things that I remembered, but then sat on a lawn chair, ate Dollar Tree's version of Thin Mints, and played on my iPad while I waited.
When I checked on it there were standing liquids, so I wiped them down with a shop towel, and used Q-tips the best that I could, but some of the spaces were too narrow.
I saw oil between the gasket and the valve cover, so I pulled the gasket, wiped it down the best that I could, and cleaned out the groove in the valve cover the best that I could, but there was still oil, so I sprayed all of it again.
At least it won't get below freezing tonight. We had a number of days that didn't get above freezing!
I still need to:
- Reinstall the valve cover using the torque wrench.
- Fill the Civic with oil.
- Reinstall the battery [that has been charging in the garage].
- Say a very sincere prayer and crank her up!
I also want to double-check the timing belt and make sure there aren't any shavings in there.