My 2.8 lost coolant through a thermostat gasket that was a goofy design. Changed it several times while I owned the car. Kept a spare in the car. I think yours is a newer design, improved design.

Got the valve covers, LIM, and pushrods removed, but not without a couple "incidents". Now I'm handling the very exciting but tedious task of cleaning the mating surfaces... any tips on that? I'm pretty pumped to be this close to reassembly!

More about the "incidents" later...

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"Senior Luna, your sense of humor is still loco... but we love it, anyway." -rickymay ____ "Your sense of humor is still loco... " -MBeige ____ "Señor Luna, your sense of humor is quite järjetön" -Delibes

1982 300SD -- 211k, Texas car, tranny issues ____ 1979 240D 4-speed 234k -- turbo and tuned IP, third world taxi hot rod

2 Samuel 12:13: "David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die."

Gasket eater

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1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

I like permatex products

the gasket eater is nice, and dont scrape aluminium with a steel blade, use a credit card edge or get a copper pipe and hammer it into a chisel and sharpen with a file, use that for scraping away on aluminium if you want.

make sure to hang some paper towels in a way that it wicks up coolant and drips it outside the valley.

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2012 BMW X5 (Beef + Granite suspension model)

1995 E300D - The original humming machine (consumed by Flood 2017)
2000 E320 - The evolution (consumed by flood 2017)