I'm possibly the dumbest member on this board at the moment. I completely did not even look to make sure my coolant crossover holes were facing the rear. So now, my heads have the plugs in the back and the open end in front. Basically the heads are backwards. Now, the easy way out would be for me to swap the plugs. It's like a bolt with a little square hole in the middle (most of you probably know what I mean) The problem is that I'm not aware of a tool I can use to pull these plugs. It's like I would need a socket wrench with a small square socket. Does a tool like this exist? Or what else can I do, aside from flipping the heads?

I don't even know how to explain my thinking (or lack of) when I did this. So I will leave it at that and hopefully get out of this without taking the heads off.

 

take em off and put them on right......

 

I am pretty sure it's like a 15mm that you use to take them off, just swap em...and the plugs should need a hex wrench I believe...it's been a while since I worked on an LT1, so correct me if I am wrong.

 

try your ratchet or an extention....if its not the right size they make square drives.....not a big deal.

Are you sure the threads are the same?

 

They are just pipe plugs. I just checked my engine, it looks like you can remove them with just a (small) 1/4" ratchet (no socket!). You should have enough room. Getting the steam pipes, bolts, small gaskets on will be the fun part

 

I'm pretty sure its a 3/8 ratchet.

 

Your not the Dumbest, We done that once before as well. Only we realized it after the first one.

 

Mine are 1/4", just stuck a 1/4" extension on the front plug by the coil.

 

Ok guys, well thanks for helping out, I will try the 1/4 in or 3/8 rachet with no socket tomorrow. Hopefully I can get enough force on them once I'm in there to loosen them. The only 1/4 rachet I have is pretty short and theres not much room to add leverage with a pipe or something.

Thanks for tryin to make me feel better Walt, but I put both heads on, so I upped you guys on that lol.

 

Yeah, Actually we took the head off, Scrated our head for about 30 minutes and reused the gasket. Car went on to run a 12.0@115 and ran a good 35000 miles before he went through it again.

 

What size are those pipe plugs? I need to pick up a couple of them.

 

You may smack the valves doing this. You might want to research it a little further even if the stk pistons have 4 relief valves in the pistons.

 

The heads are reversible, you can put them on either way, just need to put the open ends in the back so you can hook up the crossover.

 

The plug that came out of my pass side head was a bear to get out. I am running a third coolant sensor for my standalone..

I got one of those 3/8 wobble/knuckle extension and took an angle grinder to it to get it down to the squar shape. It actually broke on me the first time because of the hole in it where the ball bearing holds sockets on. Ground it down again and got the plug out easy.

 

Wrong, and wrong.

The heads are the same part numbers, therefore they *must* be reversible. There is no "left" and "right" head.