Hey guys welcome back to legit street cars and welcome to another svt lightning video. This one is definitely way long overdue. So to start, let me get everybody up to speed. Last year i bought a 2002 svt lightning, and shortly after i found out it had blown head gaskets at first, the only symptom was the truck had coolant coming out of the overflow.

Only when you went wide open throttle, the cooling system was being pressurized under boost and it failed. The exhaust gas combustion test i put about 3 000 miles on the truck like this, and as long as i didn't get into boost, everything was fine until this happened. Alright guys this might be it for the lightning i towed the trans am last week. Everything was perfect, it didn't overheat, nothing i put the car away for the weekend and then fired it back up today started driving to work and it's overheating and leaking coolant everywhere.

I pulled off the highway into a holiday in express parking lot. Luckily, i had this empty jug in the back of the truck, so i got some water. I'm gon na try and limp it back to the shop now before. I would only spew coolant out of the reservoir under boost.

I've put like 3 000 normal miles on this truck without any issues, but now i'm not getting into any boost, and it is spewing, coolant and water everywhere, not good. Let's see yep no pressure whatsoever in the hose i have 13 miles to get to the shop. It took the entire thing. I'm gon na go ask for another one before we hit the road in case.

It starts to overheat again, which probably will see where we're at should be pretty cool right now, right in the middle filled up with water, i'll use my teeth. If i have to, we got 13 miles to go, let's do this, so obviously it's good to pay attention to your coolant, gauge and that'll. Tell you if you're overheating, but for me it's so cold outside that. As soon as the heat quit, i knew something was up.

I looked over and started creeping past. The middle mark so pulled over shut it down. The engine runs beautifully. It doesn't blow any smoke out of the tailpipe in this situation.

It's just pressurizing the coolant system. All right, we have eight miles to go, i'm hopping back on the highway and i think this is where we ran into the issue. I'm not really getting into any boost. But if you look at that gauge, if i just give it a little throttle and we just get close to getting out of vacuum - i think that might be doing it.

So i got to remember that i just want to stay as far into vacuum as possible and the check engine light was from a couple of days ago. It'll set that light and go into an over heat protection type of mode where you have no power. So i already know what that code is going to be, but the thing runs beautifully still and we're almost at 85 000 miles all right. Well, i made it back to legit street quarters and the lightning did not overheat again.

So i was on pins and needles. The entire ride but uh the engine sounds great. It doesn't actually blow any smoke out of the tailpipe, but clearly it's eating coolant. Clearly, the head gaskets have totally failed at this point and yeah.

It was probably because i towed the lt1 trans am a little while back, but the entire time. I was towing that car we had no issues at all. I drove for a couple of days after that no issues and then it just kind of popped up. I let it sit for a few days hopped in it, and this is what started to happen so yeah towing, the trans am, was probably the final nail in the coffin for these head gaskets.

But that's okay, because i was gon na replace them anyway. So after making it back here to legit street quarters, i gave the truck a much needed bath to wash off all of the salt and now it's time to get to work. I have no idea who did that okay, so it is possible to replace the head gaskets on one of these uh, just as is working under the hood here, but, as you can tell, it, is very crammed. So what we're gon na do is we're gon na remove the entire cab of the lightning peter.

Is that you peter? Oh hi, hey hey! How long have you been here? I think um since, since the supercharger, the escalade video yeah - oh wow, that's that was a few months ago. I found these thanks, uh everybody. This is peter. You may recognize him from legit streetcars classics like i secretly supercharged my wife's cadillac escalade and, like i gave away a lexus and like i gave away a subaru peter's here to help.

Apparently i'm here for the supercharger stuff and he's prepared, oh and peter. Who are you wearing today by the way? Oh, this whole thing: yeah, legit, streetwear, oh svt, spring collection, nice, sweet, wow, that's really, nice! You know what i'll leave a link down below shameless plug. We have posters too, all right. So first things.

First, we have to remove this plastic cover right here and that's just a few clips very easy easiest part of this job. That's for sure, then we just have an eight millimeter for the intercooler system, coolant reservoir, and this comes right off all right. Then we have to remove the air intake system because that's going to get in the way when we lift the cab up easy enough, then we're going to disconnect the throttle linkage and we're going to go ahead and remove this entire bracket. Just a few 10 mils and now this will stay with the cab stay there good buddy, all right, so we already have the negative terminal disconnected and we need to do the positive as well, and i think this is going to stay.

I don't know where this is going to stay ready to do some more digging all right, then it looks like this. Harness is going to stay with this one and any time we can put nuts back where they go. I like to do that, because we're gon na have a lot to remember once we tear this engine down. I don't think we need to do this, but i'm gon na remove the battery there.

We go this entire harness right here that will feed down got ta. Remember it goes behind this ac line. These are the things we're not gon na. Remember because we'll be putting this back together way later and that's why i like making videos there.

We go just like the harness you wan na, be on the right side of the ac line like the right side and the wrong side of history. Ac line joke all right, all right guys. The cab is just about ready to come off, but before we do that, a minute for today's video sponsor mana, so mana is a deposit account and a visa debit card. That's made for gamers by gamers.

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Is click the link in the description box to join the wait list? Mana is coming to us in a couple of months in the middle of the summer time and if you join right now, you're going to be one of the first to get your card and start earning rewards by literally doing what you love. So a big thanks to mana for being the future of banking for gamers and for continuing to support automotive content creators like myself, okay. So this looks like a big junction block and this separates the engine harness side to the body harness. So we just have to disconnect all these gigantic connectors here we lost something there, but we will find it all right here.

We go looks like at this point. We have our entire engine harness all tucked in just like that, and then we have a vacuum line that comes with it too at the junkyard. They would just saw all this off. Oh and don't forget this ground i'll, put that right! Back, okay, someone put a sub in this and then removed it so there's our sub fuse, i can say, with the cab we just want this booster hose so that'll stay with the motor here.

Do you remember, is this reverse thread on the fan clutch? I don't remember neither do i okay, so i'm gon na replace the belts as well, and it's gon na be a lot easier to do that if we can get this fan out of here, is that reverse thread? It's got youtube people, it's a wonderful thing. The handsome guy from the youtube video said to just jam a screwdriver in and whoever put this on last time was really strong. Oh, this is nuts there's no way i tightened it that much. This is crazy.

There we go, i get it all right broke free man. I was strong in that last video peter was that better man outside 150 degrees. I can't figure out how to do anything. This looks so easy in the video they make.

It look so easy, should we call someone more experienced, i think so there we go at this point. We're gon na drain some coolant and if you guys are around for the flush video, then here you go, that's what it looks like. After all, those flushes, not horrible, got definitely a lot better than before. It was pretty much all rust here.

This is what it looked like when we got it out. We probably ran a total of 20 gallons of water and cleaners through it, and it was just all rusty yeah. This is looking pretty normal all right. This is gon na take forever.

I'm gon na pull the plug, probably make a mess. Here we go not too bad; it's draining out real slow. I wonder if there's something clogged up in there all right guys, we got the belt off the ac compressor. I have the other two bolts loose this one as well and right now we are detaching.

The ac compressor from the engine we're gon na try and leave this with the cab. Now we're gon na go ahead and take the fan shroud out as well. It's just a couple of eight millimeters there. We go all right so at this point, we're gon na pull this ac compressor forward.

So it's out of the way when we pull the cab up. Otherwise the motor will get in the way and this thing had ice, cold ac. So there's no reason to open the system and lose all of our refrigerant. There goes some bolts.

We have an intercooler hose in the way of moving that alternator. So we got to drain the system anyway, and i'm going to save this coolant looks like they had just flushed it. Maybe before i bought the truck or it's that this fluid really doesn't ever get dirty. Okay.

So now we can pull this hose here, all right and there we have it an ac compressor. That is stained with the cab. All right. I've decided i'm going to replace this radiator too.

So we're going to go ahead and remove the trans cooler lines. This thing had so much of that nasty rusted coolant that uh. If we're gon na go through this motor, it's gon na get a new one in i'll, probably do the water pump as well. All right here we go, got ta.

Take this lower radiator hose off there, we go nice and pretty and then just a couple of tens all right goodbye radiator! Thank you. You've served the lightning, well all right, guys, we're almost there. We keep on forgetting stuff. We have to take these coolers down in this pump and i'm sure once we start raising the cab we'll have forgotten something as well.

So these are bolted to what looks like would be part of the frame, but it's actually the cab. So at first glance, i'm like oh, that's just going to come with the frame and that's not the case all right. So here is our external transmission cooler. So this one has an internal cooler in the radiator and an air-to-air external all right.

We just got to pop off this shifter. Now it's got a pry here and it should pop right off there. We go all right. Let me just have to do this end of the shifter cable, a couple of clips there.

We go all right so right now we're removing the steering linkage and then some body bolts and then the cab should come up. I think we'll probably run into some snags. I thought the cab would have already been off by now, but we're probably what only like what three hours in peter yeah not bad all right. So we have the steering wheel locked in the truck, and this will only go on one way since there's a flat spot here at the bottom.

So we don't have to worry about too much here, all right, we're going to disconnect the parking brake there we go and then here is probably the easiest disconnection point. I would say all right: there we go nice, okay, all right, guys, we're at the cab bolts we're almost there. These guys are big. I've been soaking these in penetrating oil.

For days, let's see, okay, that bolt is not coming. We need fire all right here. We go all right guys. We've got this thing pretty hot and now it's time for some water and we broke it all right.

We broke it, that's okay! Luckily, it's just a big bolt going through with a nut. So no big deal, this truck, isn't even rusted, but water and stuff just gets captured inside of this little cup and that's all she wrote. We got this one heated up too and we can get the impact on the nut side. Let's see what happens hey.

What might work? Did we make it? Yes, sir, all right cool only have to buy one new bolt i'll, probably just replace them, both never a bad idea to get new subframe bolts in we used to do this at mercedes all the time they would actually get weaker from corrosion. There was a recall we had to replace a bunch of bolts in the subframe, so it's in the subframe, but same same idea get no traction. Just like this truck. I got ta push it back, so we can get the lift arms underneath the cab all right.

Now we just have four body bolts and i think the one of them in the front is here. Yep, look at this little guy snapped no biggie we'll get another one all right! Last body bolt can't get it with the gun, and luckily it's not that frozen. Oh wait smoke too soon. That's brutal just break if you're gon na break as soon as we shocked it with the water, i could feel it get really loose.

So it's a cool trick. If you have a bolt, that's stuck, although we didn't have that success with all of them, so two broken bolts, no big deal. Yes, looking good all right! This cab is ready to go up peter. How many things do you think we forgot to disconnect i'm gon na go with five i'm gon na go with three.

I think we did a pretty good job yeah, i'm optimistic so uh yeah with that. Let's do this all right, guys moment of truth. Here we go rise up, lightning cab. All right, hang on.

We got ta, always look. Don't wan na pull anything! Oh peter. We forgot something. We forgot something that harness right there.

This abs pump is staying with the frame. The harness doesn't want to go with it. It wants to stay with the body, and then i can already tell right here we're going to disconnect these guys. Okay, there's one okay, all right, so is that three things yeah, that's three things already okay, so we can't have any more mistakes now and i win.

Will you win the grand prize of not of being a bigger failure? I don't know predicting our big failures. All right take two um. What do we got too old for this getting too old? Not really. I think i got another 30 years in me.

Working on cars, this is it where's, my bucket okay, i need to get taller okay. What was that peter? Whatever it was broke free, but i kind of just want to know what it is for our way back that little pop right there was the steering shaft. It was just getting bound up in between right here. So it's all good.

We kind of got it out of the way now so now we should be good all right, peter! Do the honors, bye, bye engine keep going go ahead, i'm watching the steering shaft right now, but we should be good, should be good. Yep made it over hey. What's up hey, what's up peter look at that all right, let's go! I think we're good to go all the way, svt, lightning motor! Look at this room. This is beautiful and we did have to put some blocks there to make everything even um, but i think we're good here and our lifting points for the cab all right peter.

I think we had what like six things, that we forgot all right, but all that matters is that the engine is out now or not out, but you know what i mean the cab is out of the cabin the cab is out yeah. This is the way to work on an engine. Look at all this room i'll, be able to show you guys everything in detail as well and uh yeah. These heads are just super crammed in there.

I saw one video where the guy did the heads without taking the cab off and it just looks horrible, absolutely horrible, just little stuff like this. When we go to take this egr pipe off, you got to get that off even to get the valve cover off. It looks like this is going to be frozen. Now we have all this room to break it.

Free and uh. There's going to be a lot of while you're in there's, that is for sure, a lot of stuff going on here, too speaking of while you're in there, i should probably just put a fuel pump in this thing. Now we have easy access. Look at all this.

It's going to be very tempting not to just want to clean everything and coat everything. This is just surface rust. This thing's in great shape got some flowmasters, not the prettiest. I wasn't really planning on going too crazy with the mods, but how do i put this back together with these exhaust manifolds, how i'm kind of thinking headers, ported, blower and uh? Maybe that's it.

I don't know we'll see when we get the heads off. I might send those out and get them ported and polished. If that really gives us any gains, let me know forward guys down below. Is it a big deal to port these heads, or should i skip it all right? We got to get started tearing this engine down and i'm really curious as to how many studs we break off here.

So, let's just spray everything down and then we're gon na pull a spark plug because the big issue with these is they only had four spark plug threads in the head. So then the plugs would actually pop out and then in 2003 they upgraded it to eight threads and these heads look at the heads i mean. Maybe ford guys can tell by these numbers right here or whatever, but they look kind of shiny and nice. I know they're aluminum heads and they don't really get too dirty, but i wonder if something's been done here before you can see the date code here for the valve cover's original.

But i'm really curious to see if we have those eight threads in this cylinder head. All right guys here we go nice so far, so good. That is not broken all right. So here, let's just go around the line here: nice, nice, oh yeah, we're good all right well, at least with the four on the top.

Oh, that one's kind of loose. Actually, it's weird golden like butter, i don't actually say like butter like that, it's a throwback to saturday night live. You guys know what i'm talking about comment down below last one on this side. Nice we're good these.

I don't care if they break, because we're putting some nice shiny, long, tube headers on here anyway. So if you guys have a suggestion on long tubes for the lightning also, let me know down below there. We go the fact that these are coming off so nicely. Really has me thinking how many spark plug threads we're gon na find.

It could just be that ford uses really good hardware, and this thing wasn't really driven in the winter much, but still, i'm so used to studs breaking off on chicago cars, and i used to work with police cars all day and most of them were ford crown Victorias and they would always break all right, so we got this one out with the stud. That is a very nice looking stud i mean me the bolt's, pretty good. Looking too okay, it's actually kind of nice when the studs come out, give you more room to work with there. We go all right.

My brick is never going back on. Oh uh svt, lightning from legit streetcars.com. There we go so obviously we have bad head gaskets and that's why we're doing all of this. But it looks like there was an external leak right here too.

It's totally clean up here and then it's wet right here on the block seeping down so we'll be inadvertently fixing an external head gasket leak, because that's what that looks like all right. That was the easy side. We have a gigantic egr tube here, oh, come on! Now, okay, that would have been a fun little fall right. There definitely part of a blooper reel for you guys.

We got it, though cool something else, that'd be very difficult to do. If you didn't have the engine down here with the frame because the cab gets in the way of everything, i'm pretty sure, you're standing in the driver's seat, i am i'm the driver. No wait. Am i yeah this isn't a manual all right.

I got no broken. Studs on this either none of the studs even came out. Oh, these are so restrictive. Look at this, it's just exhaust comes out.

Just bam. Hits a wall that little square section right. There is a die date stamp, and that is an o3 which could indicate 2003. The only thing that's sort of weird about that would be that that would mean this head failed, pretty much right after the truck was put out like a year, maybe a year and a half later, and they replaced the heads under warranty in 2003.

I don't know check it out. The lightning was built in december of 2001, so it really wouldn't make any sense whatsoever for it to have a 2003 head from the factory, which means it could have had the heads replaced at the dealer. I don't know we're gon na find out: let's go pull some plugs all right doing the spark plugs on these. It's actually kind of horrible when you have the engine in, if you guys were around one or two lightning videos ago.

You know i replaced like one spark plug, because i did a dead, misfire and uh that fixed it, and i didn't do the other plugs. Obviously, because i knew i was going to be removing the engine, something else i said i was going to do was tighten up the head bolts to see if that fixed the issue, but it was just too much work to get the valve covers off for something That probably wouldn't fix the issue. It's just going to be like a legit street experiment, um, and then i was thinking about running a head gasket sealer in here i had mentioned that everybody lost their mind guys. I was always going to replace the head gaskets.

No matter what i only wanted to experiment with a sealer just to see what it looked like if it worked, especially once we get the head gaskets off, but i kind of decided against it. I didn't want to clog up anything else in the system or run into any issues at all. I just i want to get this project in and out so anyway. That feels like four threads to me yeah.

This is the new one i put in. I think so the other ones were horrible, okay, so we're going in with the boroscope and how many threads does that look like i got some coolant in there, hello all right. Look at that awesome. We already knew we had a blown head gasket.

I just want to know how many threads one two three four five, five threads, it's either four or eight, i'm going to say this top one. I'm counting is probably not a thread, so one two, three four four threads: what in the world all right so we're on the driver's side right now. This is the side that i could see the the zero three that's great man. Could they put more stuff in the way of doing the spark plugs okay, getting there one step at a time, oh, that one's really bad.

Look how wet! That is all right. So i'm here to count spark plug threads, but i'm also here to see the nastiness of this blown head gasket. This looks pretty cool. It's like an alien planet that we're at um.

What do we got? There's some coolant. You can kind of see some puddling. It's hard to turn this little borescope, but you can see some right there at the bottom of the screen. There's a little puddle, it's hard for me to turn the camera yeah.

Anyway, you get the idea, blown head gaskets! How many threads? Does this look like more threads than before, it's so hard to tell with all the crud on there i mean it definitely looks like more than four did they replace one head on this one, two, three, four, five, six, seven eight was this one done. I don't know, let me know in the comments guys this definitely looks like it has more threads than the other one, but it's hard to tell all right, so we might have one new head, that's the one that is stamped o3 and the other one. It's hard to tell what it's stamped with what number it's all kind of weird looking, but that one looked like a four thread. This one looks like an eight thread.

I don't know, but we're gon na find out in the next episode for sure, because we're gon na be removing these heads, seeing where the head gasket failed, seeing what we can see inside of the motor something else i want to determine after i get the heads Off is, do i need to send this engine in, for, at the very least, a cleaning? I don't suspect any issue with the bottom end at all. This thing had all of its power. It never smoked nothing even with bad head gaskets and the oil looks good and all of that stuff. But i am worried about the amount of rust that we had in the cooling system a few videos ago.

If that has just embedded itself in the block and is going to continue to be an issue um, i might want to do something about that. While we have it all apart so anyway, that is all for the next episode. I hope you guys really enjoyed this one. If you did don't forget, give this video a thumbs up share the video with your friends subscribe if you're new and, most importantly, have an awesome day i'll catch all of you in the next video you.