They don't want to move! Doing a long, drawn-out headgasket replace on my 3vze - only 110k and the original HG on there. Long and drawn-out just because I'm busy. But the frozen exhaust nuts ain't helping!

Out of 6 on the driver's side - 3 for crossover, 3 for down pipe - 1 of each 3 refused to move. PB Blaster, Freezy stuff, 3-foot breaker bar, impact wrench - all worthless.

Cut off the top one on the crossover, left the one on the exhaust and just unhooked the downpipe from the cat. I'll remove the stuck one when it's all out.

Other than those frozen nuts - insert joke here - no real surprises. I had hoped that the cams could stay in but they're in the way of a couple of the headbolts. Actually, it looks like you can just loosen the cam bearing bolts and get the headbolts out. Less chance of losing things that way!

 

PB blaster is your friend.

 

propane torch !!! just don't get too close to the heads. I am not familiar with the 3.0 so I don't know where those bolts are.

 

well from what others have done and what you can search on here is that putting headers on the 3.0 is supposed to help your headgasket not fail as much. so id just cut them off and re do everything. if you cant afford that cause its expensive like the others said pb blaster all day long, and a better impact wrench.

 

I put Thorley headers on my 88 3.0 a couple weekends back, I sprayed all that I could with PB then rigged up a few extensions and a swivel and got to them all from underneith with out raising the truck. I was able to get the crossover pipe out without any issues through the drivers side wheel well.. All said I snapped one of the tiny 8mm bolts that heald a stock heat sheild in place on the iron manifold!