Hey everyone sorry to be out of touch for a bit, I've got good news the kid finally got the car! After a week and a half of playing ipsy f*in diddly switch with the previous owner. The prev owner wanted to "be fair" and give the 2 people who called before him a chance at the car even though he had cash in hand to buy it. The 1st didnt want it and the 2nd needed "time to get the $ together" and the a$$ held it for him.
WHAT a suprise he ended up backing out of the deal. Fortunately the kid took my advice and shot him an offer of 2/3 the asking price and they settled on about $250 less for the car. He's got it home and is gonna start tearing it apart and hopefully wait till I get up there in a few weeks to put it back together. Despite all the great info I've obtained here, he's got this friend that
"knows everything" about cars and is trying to convince him to simply slap a gasket on it without sending the head off to the shop 1st. I've done that a few times in the past on my 2.2 Mopars, sometimes I got lucky, sometimes not. But from what I've learned here you cant do that with the 3.0 head and expect it to work. He's been trying to give me the excuse (and it's a sound principle) that if too much material is removed from the head it'll throw the cam timing off. Told him even if it were planed that far there are ways to compensate for it, head shim + neat-o shiney go-fast adjustable cam gears, lol In your experience at what point would a head shim be neceassary to restore proper cam timing? Would you guys advise for, or against a shim altogether? Also I'd want to chase the threads before installing the head bolts, what is the thread pitch? He's not going to mod the car at all, so we'll be going with a composite gasket, which manufacturers would you recommend/avoid? Same for the timing belt, which should I go for or stay away from? thanks again for all the responses, I've got great deal of info on here!
