My wife and I drove an hour up to St. Louis yesterday to check my work on Kai's car. Although she said her engine light had gone out, the scanner was still saying there was an air leak and she was running lean. My son bought her and her brothers scanners and an app that tells them what the codes are and a brief description of what's going on. (I'm a geezer, so I carry a copy of the code numbers for my truck on a piece of paper). I pulled the valve cover I installed last week and cleaned the mating surface really well. Apparently, when I was installing it at our house, one of the two people who stopped to ask me something while driving by caught me at the moment I was getting ready to put the new cover in and I forgot to clean the head's surface. Stupid mistake on my part. Although it wasn't "nasty", it did have some outer crud on it, so I cleaned it up and reinstalled it. I also pulled the MAF sensor and sprayed it with maf spray, and then sprayed the air intake hose to the throttle body and as much of the pcv hose that I could see, since it disappears behind the engine, but got no negative response in the idle, so I'm assuming the leak isn't there. I didn't put my scanner on it afterwards due to her having a Progressive Insurance tool on it and I didn't want to mess something up with that. As mentioned before, I'm a technilogically challenged geezer. I'll let my son or Kai do it.
ozonetrooper- Per the coil and plugs, if you have a 1.8, anyway, it's actually a pretty easy job. It's all right on top, with around 11 or 12 bolts to pull (all easy to get to), disconnect the pcv hose and the coil connecting plug, and your there. And unless you want to change the valve cover, you don't need to pull the pcv hose or all those valve cover bolts, but that's easy, too. Actually, all you would have to do is pull the cover on the top of the valve cover, pull the plug, loosen he two bolts that hold the coil pack, and that's it. All the rest is for pulling the valve cover itself for a bad pcv valve. Here's the best youtube video I found for the job. It was a big help.
The one thing I will say about this is mentioned in one or two videos I watched, which is the coil plugs release tab is really cheap and breaks easy. Kai's did. The orange tab broke immediately when i tried to pull it out. Then, when I tried to pull the plug loose, the whole section that the orange tab is housed it broke to pieces. Fortunately, the guy in one of the videos says this is a common problem, but not to worry, just plug it back in an it will be alright. You can get a new plug at rock auto and cut a new one in, but I just used good (3M) electrical tape and made a wrap around the wire end of the plug and then laid the tail of the tape onto the top of the coil. I did this both directions so it would hold from both sides. When i pulled the cover yesterday, the tape i'd put on last weekend was still in place. You probably don't need to do that, but i wanted to make sure it didn't vibrate off. But that's the only thing I can see that would be any problem, there. Just keep your spark plug holes covered up so you don't drop anything down there. Also, Kai had a new coil put in not long ago, and when i pulled it out it was "clean", with no anti-sieze on it, so I brushed some on to the outer cone of each plug to make it easier to get out next time. Not that it was hard. A light pry on each end should get it out, and if you're installing a new one, you don't have to worry about hurting the old one. Just watch what your prying off of so that you don't break parts with the pressure on them. A towel or shirt works good as padding under whatever prying tool you use.
