Undertook the job on Friday morning. I get Friday off every two weeks in exchange for 9 hour days. It's a good deal! Disassembly was fairly straightforward except for the electrical connectors. One never knows how those are going to come off and I didn't want to break them. The most stubborn was on the left side base of the throttlebody. How it came off was not obvious so I just left it connected until the manifold was completely free, then turned it towards me where I could get a look at it. Still not straightforward as the little red slide didn't release the connector and it still had to be pried apart. I kind of hate doing that because I don't want to break something, but it came apart okay. I had not been able to get to the brake booster and planned to do it as I pulled the manifold out but it seemed to slid off okay. It was amazing how close the crossover pipe was to coming out without pulling the manifold but this was no horseshoes or hand grenades so I had to keep going. When I got everything removed, this is what it looked like (after I plugged all the holes!)
This explained why I could smell coolant, and it was dropping in my overflow, but I wasn't seeing much on the floor! At least this wasn't full of camshaft, pushrod, and lifters! Man would that have turned into a fun job. With paper towels and a carefully used garden hose and nozzle it cleaned up quite nicely in a half-hour. There was some discoloration around the intake ports but not bad and it cleaned up nicely with a brass brush.
This is what it looked like just before I put it back together. I just used the shop vac to **** out the plastic bags and any grit or brass fibers that had fallen in. I then wiped all the mating surfaces down with mineral spirits.
Here are the new(FelPro) and the old gaskets. The new ones felt a little beefier but the old ones have been thermal cycling in the block for a few years so the comparison isn't really fair. But looking them over did reveal a smoking gun, which I always like, since I'm not left guessing if I found or fixed the problem.
And this is the circled areas above. The surfaced of the gasket that had been in contact with the water was eroded and there was a crack, circled in red above but obvious here, all the way through the plastic gasket. The only thing holding it in place was the rubber o-ring. No wonder it was leaking!
Assembly was the reverse of assembly and I did take advantage of having the manifold off to replace all the spark plugs. I can be sure that none of my cylinders are burning oil, they all have similar compression and weren't ingesting any water.
So far it seems to be running fine. No tell-tale drips but I am still getting a faint ethylene glycol smell. I rinsed out the engine above and below but I think there is still some residual that had been baked on that will take a while to completely out-gas.
I want to thank all the responders for their advice and information. I hadn't had a car engine apart in a while and all the help here made it easier to go in. I saved about $1K and know for sure that all the bolts are back where they should be and are properly torqued and all none of the electrical or vacuum connectors were pried apart or damaged in the making of this film.
Over all I'm impressed with the design of the engine. A far, far cry from the old V8's I beat on as a kid. The design process is clearly far advanced, the build quality is better, and the engine control systems have moved beyond dashpots, springs, and bi-metallic strips. It feels like a well-integrated unit that requires a lot less fiddling. Well done Ford!
When I was all done I treated myself to something that I didn't need but that I did want.
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