[Jeramy]

so... here is a run down of the weekend...ish
looked at and picked up a th400 on friday for 50 bucks. nice clean fluid fairly clean pulled from a motor home that was gutted for the engine.
PROS
nice and clean
simple operation
easy to install
was dirt cheap
Cons
no torque converter, but plan to run one from my th350
will require crank spacer
no overdrive

move on to Saturday i decided it was long past due to lay my hands on the 5.3 i bought months ago and get some work done. Stayed after work, seeing as had been storing it in the warehouse behind store, and pulled front accessory set, exhaust manifolds, intake, fly wheel, coil packs, and starter. Already had the wiring harness off and home. basically stripped to a long block.

then loaded up and brought home to place on engine stand and stuck it in my shed.

roll on to Sunday. after church i decided i needed to do something that i had not done yet but apparently should have done to begin with. i attempted to turn the engine over by hand. NO GO. serious snafu in my day i tell you.

so off comes the heads and i find cylinder 5 rusted up fairly well and cylinder 6 starting to. Sprayed all cylinders down with sea-foam deep creep and scrubbed #5 with a piece of red scotch brite to remove what i could. then taped all pistons with the wooden handle of a 3lb hammer. now it spins over but now i have to decide how far i want to take this thing apart.

also have 3 broken exhaust manifold bolts to fix and middle water pump bolt on passenger side snapped off