You guys will be pleased to know that I pulled Sunshine’s head off the other day. Unfortunately, it’s too heavy/awkward for me to lift out of the engine compartment myself with the intake manifold, exhaust manifold, and turbo still attached. So, a friend is going to give me a hand with it tomorrow. I can’t wait to get it out and on the bench so I can see what I have to work with. Will the manifolds and head already be ported? Does the head have a valve job? I’ll see soon enough.

So far the Shelby has been much easier to work on than my Focus. I don’t know if it’s because it has such low miles on it and has spent so much time indoors or if it’s just because I have more room to work with in the engine compartment…or both. No fasteners have been frozen (knock on wood) or stripped. The only difficulty I had so far was figuring out what to use as a jacking point to raise the car high enough to put on stands, and getting the valve cover off. It was nearly glued in place with form-a-gasket (instead of silicone) so it was really difficult to remove. The throttle body is also stuck in place on the intake manifold. I have to figure out how to get it to separate without damaging anything.