1997 GSX - DD, RR, and 11's.

[SlowWhite]

Well today was a productive day on the car.

removed the turbo system from the car, and from there i was able to remove 3 of the 4 bolts with out issues (help of PB blaster) the 4th one I had to grind down the top till it was 1/2 gone (disc wouldn't reach any farther) so was hoping a pair of vice grips might be able to brake it off the rest of the way (turns out heat of the grinding must have loosened up the bolt as it unscrewed) at the very end I found the reason why it was so hard to remove, previous owner cross threaded the bolt.

So luckily I have a full die and tap set, and was able to re tap the hole to the correct thread size/pattern.

I also found that the lower middle three studs for the exhaust manifold were missing there nuts/washers. So replaced those as well.

And when trying to remove the airlines from the waste gate I found that both lines going to it had become brittle and had holes in them. One was so bad it had 3 holes in it and the only thing keeping it attached to the WG was the string inside the rubber.

So replaced/checked all the lines that needed replacing.

Did find one thing I'm concerned about. There was small amount of oil on the exhaust manifold to head gasket around most of the ports. I checked the lower I/C pipe for oil but it was clean/dry. So what does that mean? valves? rings?
I have only seen minor smoke when starting a WOT pull from time to time (thought it was just smoke from running rich, but now I'm not sure)
Tomorrow I'm going to do a compression test as well as see if there is oil on the plugs.