Headless

I was able to get all 21 head bolts out without an impact wrench and without breaking any of them.  The only tricky part was the bulb for the temperature gauge was stuck in the head.  I had to remove the soft plug above the bulb so I could push it out.  The head was too heavy to lift off by myself so I waited for my brother-in-law to come over for Christmas eve.  We took a short break from the festivities and lifted it out.  I was expecting an animal nest of some sort to be inside so was pleasantly surprised to see that it looks so good.  I think the piston and cylinder bores look great - there is no rust and no ridges at the top of the bores, indicating that there are few miles on the rebuild. 

Because the spark plugs are above the valves rather than the cylinders, the valves are in the worst shape.  Two look particularly bad, one of which appears to be affixed to its seat with corrosion.  The other has rust on its face but is not stuck to the seat and the seat itself looks fine.  My guess is that water dropped on the face of that one and then down the stem into the guide, causing who-knows-what kind of trouble down there.  I put a few tablespoons of oil in each piston bore and have sprayed the valves a couple times with PB-Blaster and the ATF/acetone mix.  I'm also occasionally rapping lightly on the frozen valve with a rubber mallet.  I still can't turn it over by hand and plan to finally buy a large socket this weekend so I can try with a ratchet.

I made the bonehead mistake of removing the head without first draining the block.  I had it in my head that removing the radiator would lower the fluid level below the surface of the block.  But the inlet and outlet of the radiator connect to the water pump which is high on the block.  This means that some fluid probably went into the valves and cylinder bores.  A few days later I removed the block drain plug and was able to get it to drain after digging around in there a bit with a wire. 

The only other thing I've done is remove the water pump, which I am starting to doubt is rebuildable because of all the corrosion.  An oddity of this motor is that there are two large passages in the front of the block which would appear to connect to passages in the water pump.  The water pump, however, has a backing plate that blocks one of the passages.  I can't figure out why Chrysler would put the passage in the block and then cover it up with a plate.