93 Explorer, reducing oil usage

[konstan]

gettin' her all cleaned up

Tonight I only got to work on it for a couple of hours, so I prepared the surfaces for the installation.

I also finally disconnected the oil level sender (I think that is what it is) and was able to move the entire wiring harness out of the way.

Here is the lower intake, cleaned up on the outside. I cleaned the inside a little too, carbon comes off but the oil film I left. Thermostat housing had paint peeling all over the place and had rust, so it got painted:

And then, as I was ready to put the gasket on, I realized that I do not have an in-lbs torque wrench. The one I have is too big.

So, covered the engine with a plastic bag for the night:

Here is a pic that has my valve covers. One cleaned up nicely and all the paint on it was good. The other one had much of the paint peeled off, and had rust, so I repainted it with gray engine paint:

(not the best painting job, but a big improvement over what it looked like before)

 

[konstan]

Spark plug condition

While I am at it, I replaced the spark plugs. The old ones seemed to be really worn, and several of them had some heavy ASH deposits; I think from the intake manifold gasket leaking oil into the intake:

 

[konstan]

And here is the pic of the lower manifold and the valve covers installed.