Instructions for Head Gasket Replacement by a Novice

[j_p_lockwood]

HOW TO REPLACE A HEAD GASKET - A guide for novices

INTRODUCTION
I'm writing these instructions because I hoped that my experience would help other novices perform a GM 3.1L V6 head gasket replacement. I had very little mechanical experience when I did mine (just one brake job and one battery replacement before), but this job is doable by a novice if you're careful and you follow the Haynes manual methodically and use your head if you get stuck or something goes wrong. My experience was based on a 1995 Lumina with 3.1L engine. Obviously, I can't guarantee your experience will be uneventful, but at least you'll be going in to this with your eyes open.

The whole job takes a while. I worked only when I could find the time on the weekends, and even then not always full days or even both weekend days. I started on Feb 28 and finished on May 1. 2 months sounds like a long time (and it was), but if you can spend consecutive days doing it it's doable in under a week. If you work long days I estimate a novice can complete it in 4-5 days. Bear in mind that some time will be required to get the heads machined (if warped). I once saw in a forum that a guy replaced his Lumina head gasket in a Sunday afternoon. I'm convinced he was lying.

If you spot any mistakes in my notes, or have anything to add please tell me and I'll modify the post.

REQUIRED TOOLS
- 3/8 inch ratchet and metric sockets (mostly uses 10mm, 13mm and 15mm), including deep well sockets.
- Smaller ratchet for fiddly places
- 3/8 inch breaker bar
- 3/8 inch torque wrench
- Socket extensions (several sizes)
- Universal joints (though these are mostly useless)
- Metric open and end closed end wrenches
- Large (LARGE) adjustable wrench (for a single large hose connection, unless you have a 25mm+ wrench kicking around)
- Pipe to extend leverage of above wrench
- Pry bars in various sizes
- Pliers - regular and needle nose
- Couple of flat head screwdrivers
- Gasket scraper
- Flashlight
- Small mirror for finding hidden bolts
- Straight edge
- Feeler gauges

OTHER STUFF
- Haynes manual for your specific car. I find Haynes to be better to work with than Chilton, but neither is that consistent
- WD40 or other light oil, to help un-seize bolts and clean them
- Acetone (nail varnish remover) to degrease surfaces
- Throttle body cleaner
- Gasket remover - pretty useless, but you might have more luck with it than I did
- Thread sealant (white Teflon goo to stop leaks through bold threads)
- RTV sealant (black silicon goo)
- Replacement gaskets and fuel injector O rings (the whole set costs about $150 for a 3.1 engine)
- Replacement head bolts (the are not reusable because they're stretched when they're put on)
- New coolant
- New oil
- Moly-based grease (molybdenum grease is black smelly grease that you put on the ends of the pusher rods to keep them lubricated)
- Ratchet hold-down strap (for holding engine in tilted position when engine bracket is removed)

Other major tune-up items
It's a good idea after a head replacement to also replace the following items:
- Thermostat (if yours hasn't been changed for a while it's easier to do it with the engine in bits). Costs maybe $10 or less
- Transmission fluid and filter (boy, is this messy!) because if your engine overheated your transmission fluid may be significantly degraded, which can cause transmission problems
- Fuel filter (I was so soaked in gas after this that I was afraid I would spontaneously combust)
- Oil change
- Add fluffy dice to mirror (why not?)

GENERAL NOTES
There are a lot of wires and hoses that have to be disconnected. Make sure you label every one of them with a descriptive name and position. Draw diagrams, take photos, do whatever you need to, but always have a good record of where stuff goes even if it seems obvious when you disconnect it. Trust me, there will be times when you put it back together when you are unsure where something goes. Most of the connectors are pretty unique, in that they usually only fit in the place where they're supposed to be. In particular, all the electrical connectors have different connectors. But that being said, still label them all.

Physical strength isn't that important for doing this work, but there are places that require a lot of stretching to reach. I'm just over 6ft tall and I found many things a stretch. My wife could reach most things, but she found it hard going.

IDENTIFICATION OF MAJOR PARTS
I put every group of bolts in separate bags with a piece of paper explaining what it is and where it came from. It's also a good idea to arrange these filled bags in a sensible order. At first I pretty much threw them in a box, and that caused me extra work later on because it was hard to find things, and I ended up rearranging them anyway.

It's not necessarily easy at first to know by looking at the engine which bit is what. Here's a rough description from memory:
- The top-most thing is the upper intake manifold (plenum), the bit where the air goes in, and connected to it is the throttle body and lots of hoses and cables
- At the front and back, kind of on the edges of the engine, are the two valve covers. The bit you put oil into is a valve cover, and there's a similar one at the back of the engine
- Under the plenum is the fuel rail, which holds the fuel injectors. It's an aluminum arrangement of small pipes
- Under the fuel rail is the lower intake manifold
- Under the lower intake manifold and valve covers are the cylinder heads. These are attached at the angle of the V of the cylinders, and butt up to both the lower intake manifold and the valve covers
- At the front-most and rear-most position in the engine are the front and rear exhaust manifolds. They're not immediately obvious because they covered by aluminum heat shields. They're actually rusty steel pipes that take the exhaust gases from the cylinders to the exhaust system
- In between each of these components is a gasket that creates a seal. The gasket material varies from metal, rubber and fiber, depending on what it's sealing

ORDER OF REMOVAL
One thing I found fiddly about working with the Haynes manual is that you have to jump from page to page quite a lot, so it's not that easy to know at the beginning exactly what has to come off. Here's the list I wrote as I was doing the job. While this tells you the order in which things need doing, it doesn't tell you how to do them. Use the manual for specifics, and check for my additional notes on some items.

Items with asterisks (*) denote more detailed notes below.

Cover your garage floor with newspaper, or anything else you can get your hands on because this gets messy
(Disconnect battery and remove air filter assembly, labeling wires and hoses)
1. Drain coolant (even after draining it's amazing how much additional coolant comes out of the engine at random times!)
2. *Release fuel pressure
3. *Disconnect throttle cable (and cruise control cable, if equipped)
4. Disconnect and label wires and hoses from upper intake manifold (plenum)
5. *Remove serpentine belt
6. Disconnect and label alternator wires and remove 2 black alternator supports (and alternator, if you can at this stage)
7. Rotate engine and remove spark plug wires (you can leave the spark plugs for later, when the engine's in bits)
8. Remove dipstick support bolt
9. Remove ignition module
10. Remove throttle cable support bracket (doing this earlier may make it easier to disconnect the throttle cables)
11. Remove PCV valve and hose (and disconnect another sensor in that vicinity, if there is one)
12. Remove MAP sensor from the intake manifold (takes a little working out which bits come off)
13. *Remove upper intake manifold (plenum). Needs some serious cleaning, and the gasket must be completely removed. I kept my bolts in order but I don't think this has to be done

Have a rest. You're doing great. Hang in there.

14. *Disconnect fuel injector electrical connectors from fuel injectors (note unusual clip release), and remove the fuel rail
15. Disconnect coolant bypass hose at the left hand side (the pipe that goes along the front of the engine) and position it out of the way
16. Remove front valve cover (4 bolts, one hidden under engine support)
17. Remove alternator (if not done already)
18. Remove alternator support bracket (there's a lot attached to the alternator region, so make sure you label it well and remember what goes on top of what), and remove the engine-lifting hook
19. Remove long sensor support bolt at the rear of the engine because it's in the way of the rear valve cover bolt
20. Remove rear valve cover
21. Remove power steering pump (which stays connected to its hoses, so no draining required) and put it somewhere out of the way
22. *Disconnect the heater hose (the huge nut at the rear, right). I bent up one black bracket a little to get to it
23. Remove lower intake manifold. This will need cleaning. I kept my bolts in order, but I don't think it's necessary

Wow, just look at how far you are. Treat yourself to something nice.

24. Remove crossover heat shield (this is the aluminum plate thing at the right, between both exhaust manifolds. The crossover joins the front and real exhausts into one exhaust)
25. Remove left engine support strut thingy
26. Remove left cooling fan
27. *Remove AC compressor (stays connected to its hoses) - check for hidden bolts
28. *Left engine bracket (the thing at the front left, bolted to the engine block). Lots of bolts, some hidden or hard to find and the Haynes manual won't help you
29. Remove front exhaust bolts
30. Remove front exhaust manifold and the heat shield under it
31. Remove front rockers and pushrods (pushrods needs to be kept in order because they're different lengths). There is more than one design for the rockers, so you might find the Haynes manual photos differ from what you have
32. Remove front head bolts (hard) and front cylinder head. Discard bolts

Look at that. That's what your cylinders look like. It's a good feeling, but not as good as when you're finished.

33. Remove exhaust crossover from rear exhaust manifold and pull it out
34. Remove EGR tube (the metallic thing that looks like a fat bendy straw and screws into the rear exhaust)
Note: I still had the EGR sensor attached to wires at this point, and just had the whole lot sitting on the windshield, but I recommend disconnecting the EGR sensor completely because it needs cleaning and a new gasket pair anyway
35. Disconnect the Oxygen sensor electrical connections (the big sensor at the back). I left the actual sensor itself still attached to the head, but it's probably a smarter idea to remove it at this stage because they're supposedly quite delicate)
36. Remove rear exhaust manifold heat shield
37. *Disconnect rear manifold to exhaust pipe bolts (check notes below - these are the hardest bolts to reach in the whole engine)
38. Remove rear, lower exhaust manifold heat shield
39. Remove rear exhaust manifold and upper heat shield (one of my bolts broke at this point). It's pretty fiddly getting this big hunk of rusting metal out from behind the transmission dipstick, but persevere. You may need to just force some things out of the way, and you'll be fine as long as you're careful
40. Remove rear rockers and pushrods (keep them in order)
41. Remove rear head bolts (hard) and rear cylinder head. Discard bolts
(Mop up the coolant that went into your cylinders)

You're there! Taking it to bits is much harder than putting it all back together because you're learning as you go, and now you know what things look like and how they fit together.

ADDITIONAL NOTES

General note: don't be afraid to do the engine-tilting thing whenever you think it'll make your life easier. I did most of the rebuild with the engine in the tilted position, but there were times when I had to let it rock back to the normal resting position. The tilting procedure is described in the Haynes manual, but basically you put the car in neutral, block the wheels, DON'T apply the parking brake, then use either a pry bar to lever the engine forward, putting the bolt back in place to hold it in the tilted position, or do as I did and use a ratchet hold-down strap to pull the top of the engine forward and hold it there. This is the only way to do it once the left engine bracket is removed.

2. *Release fuel pressure
The Haynes manual says get a fuel pressure gauge with a pressure release valve, but this is completely unnecessary unless you have one lying around (they cost $30). Instead, take off he Schrader valve (fancy name for a bike tire valve) cover on the fuel rail, put a rag close to it (some fuel is going to squirt out), then use any small instrument (I used a pen top) to push in the valve in the center for a couple of seconds until fuel stops squirting out. This usually is over in under a second. You just saved yourself some hassle.

3. *Throttle cables
These were a bit of a pain. I don't know that there's an easy way to do it, but I just fiddled with it, taking the pressure off the cable by rotating the springy thing and unhooked it. There's a little metal piece on the end of the cable that slots into a matching groove in the assembly and it just needs to be pushed out (in the direction of the rear of the car).

5. *Serpentine belt
My Haynes manual forgot to tell me that there's a 3/8 inch square hole in the tensioner arm into which you can put a breaker bar to release the pressure on the belt and just pull it off. I didn't know this, and I had to pull it by hand (not easy!) while my wife unhooked the belt.

13. *Upper intake manifold
Mine had the gasket stuck to it completely. It's a fiber gasket, and mine was impossible to remove completely. After hours of scraping and spraying with gasket remover (crappy stuff if you ask me) I gave up and took it to my local machine shop. They took it off and machined it to get rid of the scratches I'd put in for $30. Unfortunately, I didn't notice the gasket was stuck on until late in the procedure, so I wasted time waiting a couple of days for it to be machined when I could have had it done early on.

14. *Fuel injector electrical connectors and fuel rail
I broke one electrical connector until I realized how these things are supposed to come off. All you have to do it push the metal clip in, towards the body of the connector. This bends the ends of the metal clip apart and allows them to be removed easily. Now, the fuel rail is very difficult to remove. The Haynes manual says pry the fuel rail from the lower intake, keeping the injectors attached to the fuel rail. Well, good luck with that. I used every pry bar at my disposal, working round them just trying to have some success. Basically it just took a lot of prying. Those suckers are stuck in pretty tightly. I even bent part of my fuel rail while doing it and when it did come off, 3 of the injectors were still stuck in the intake. No biggie, though, a pair of pliers will get them out. The O rings at each disconnected end of the injectors need to be replaced. They should have come as part of the head gasket set you bought. It's worth cleaning the nozzles of the injectors with a little acetone and a Q-Tip. There's not much else you can do to clean them, except professional cleaning on a special rig. If you have diagnosed any dodgy ones, now's the time to replace them. I was going to replace all of mine to be safe until I found out how much they cost ($80 each).

22. *Heater hose
This one takes some serious persuasion to get loose. I didn't have a wrench big enough, and the cost of a single big wrench didn't seem worth it, so I got a big adjustable. By this time I was sick of going out for stuff I didn't have, so to be safe I also got a piece of pipe from a hardware store just in case I needed extra leverage, and I sure needed it.

27. & 28. *AC Compressor and left engine bracket
I don't think the Haynes manual mentioned taking the bracket off, but you need to in order to get to the front exhaust manifold bolts. In fact, the manual has a picture showing you where the bolts for the exhaust are with the bracket removed, but it doesn't mention the bracket at all. It's not immediately obvious how many bolts there are, and there always seem to be more. It doesn't help that the lower part of my engine was covered in oil and crap and I couldn't see some bolts even with a flashlight. Here's my description of the bolts for both the AC compressor and the engine bracket:
- From the front, looking toward the rear of the car: 4 bolts, 2 upper (at each edge) and 2 lower (offset to the right, near the oil filter)
- From the top, looking down: 2 bolts at the top
- From the left side, looking to the right: 3 bolts around the loop for the AC compressor
- From the right side, looking to the left: 2 bolts in line vertically, also for the AC compressor
Note: getting the compressor back in place is a pain because it's heavy and it's too easy to cross-thread the bolts. I recommend having something (or someone) to take the weight of the compressor as you get it back into position

37. *Rear exhaust manifold to exhaust pipe bolts
Hoo, boy, these are tough. The manual says (with the engine in it's normal untilted position) get to these bolts from under the car. Now, these bolts are rusty as anything and have are holding springs in place, and you can just about see them from the top but it's hard to get to them. I tried getting to them from below and I managed one with a long extension and a lot of swearing, but there was no way I could get to the other one. Instead, I tilted the engine forwards and managed to get to it from above. Not easy, though. When you unbolt them, you'll find a kind of ball joint slider ring thing that keeps the link between the exhaust and manifold in contact when the engine's tilted. Make a note of which way round this ring thing goes because I forgot to and I had to guess in the end. Any by the way, these rusty pieces of work are even harder to get on than they are to get off.

ONCE IT'S IN PIECES
Now start checking everything for signs of damage and clean everything. Surfaces that have gaskets need to be cleaned better than you've ever cleaned anything in your life. On the cylinder heads and mating surfaces I used WD40 to help scrape of some of the gasket material that stays behind, followed by application of acetone to remove oil and more scraping, finally ending up with a few cycles of more acetone wiped on with paper rags and Q-Tips. I found Q-Tips to be really useful here because you have to remove all traces of oil/grease/blood/sweat/tears to get a good gasket seal. Most of the engine components in this car are aluminum which is easily scratched with a stainless steel gasket scraper, so be careful. Clean bolt holes with Q-Tips. I did use a tap and die set to trace the threads of bolt holes, but I'm not sure this did anything that Q-Tips and acetone couldn't fix.

Another worthwhile note is that if you're going to leave your cylinders exposed to air for more than a day or so, I'd spray them with WD40 to inhibit rust development. You'll probably find carbon deposits on the piston which you can remove, but don't scrape the cylinder walls with anything unless you add a trendy blue smoke effect to your car's exhaust.

Check your cylinder heads for warp with a straight edge diagonally across the head's engine block mating surface, and a 0.003 inch feeler gauge. Personally, I tried this but I wasn't confident with my findings. It seemed I could get that feeler gauge through anywhere if I tried hard enough, so I took it to a machine shop to be checked. Lucky for me the head wasn't warped (how, I don't know), and they cleaned it better than I ever could. Plus, I paid for a basic valve job at the same time to fix a cylinder misfire problem. I figured I'd done enough work at this point, so I didn't mind paying $60 or so for this stuff to be done. Also, I had a broken bolt stud in one bolt hole and I paid for this to be removed and replaced ($7).

Put it all back together. Go on, it'll be OK. Use RTV sealant as instructed by the manual. Use thread sealant as instructed by the manual. Just do everything by the book, even if it seems painful and too cautious. As long as you've been careful and made good notes you shouldn't encounter too many problems reversing the steps above.

Make sure everything is back in place, and all hoses and wires are connected. I had fun figuring out which wires and hoses around the EGR hose went in which order because I'd moved them around so much. Be prepared to disconnect and reconnect some things a couple of times if they're wrong. It's probably best not to cut corners unless you want big scary flames shooting out the back of your car when you start it up. Don't forget to add oil and coolant (seriously, I nearly forgot to add oil after draining it).

COOLANT NOTES
Here's a note about adding coolant to the 3.1 Lumina (and presumably other W-body GM cars with this engine). Be patient. My car has a little sticker under the hood that informs you that the car has a special coolant fill procedure. This is true, but what it doesn't tell you is that it's different than both the GM manual and the Haynes manual instructions. Here's my version:
- With all the hoses reconnected (yeah, I know, but I forgot to put the plug back in the radiator and when I started filling it it poured out on my garage floor) pour 50/50 coolant/water mix into the radiator until it's full
- Fill the coolant reservoir to the cold mark
- Put the radiator cap back on
- Open the two bleed valves a couple of turns. One is on the thermostat housing, on the right, and the other one is on the bypass hose, on the top left. I broke one of mine which irked me no end, considering how well everything else had gone
- Start the engine (see below)
- Leave the coolant bleed valves open with the engine running. The reason for this is that you have to allow air in the cooling system to be forced upwards and out through the bleed valves. The radiator in this car is lower than the highest point of the engine, so the air can collect in the engine which isn't good because air is a very bad heat conductor
- If coolant starts coming out of a bleed valve, close it. BUT! With the engine running, open them back up every so often. What I found is that the air in the system moves. I would open one valve until coolant came out, then close it and open the other. After repeating this a few times, about 20 minutes or more, I started getting coolant only coming out (if it's bubbling, there's still air in the system so let it bubble). Once it completely stops bubbling at both bleed valves you've gotten all the air out of the system. Way to go
- Pushing the air out of the system has almost certainly caused the coolant level in the reservoir to drop, so top it up (if the engine's warm, put it to the hot level)

I suspect that many mechanics do not give the car enough time to get all the air out. I found that takes 20-30 minutes to completely bleed the cooling system, and since you pay a fixed rate for a cooling system flush I betcha they're not being as thorough as you are. Leaving any amount of air in the system is bad for your engine because it reduces the efficiency of the coolant system. Short of a lack of oil, there is nothing worse for your car than overheating.

STARTING THE ENGINE
Before you start it up you need to build up the fuel pressure since you relieved it earlier. To do this, turn the key to the ON position (the lights on the dash come on) but don't start the engine yet. With the hood and door/window open you'll hear the fuel pump make a high pitched buzzing noise. You've probably never noticed it before, but now things somehow seem different. The buzzing ends after a couple of seconds. Turn the key back to the off position and wait a few seconds, then repeat this procedure until the high pitch buzzing becomes a lower pitch buzzing. This means that the fuel pump has taken up the slack in the fuel system and has restored the pressure (takes about 3-4 cycles).

Now you can start the engine. Mine started first time, almost as if it had never been shut down. This is a good sign. I can't tell you what to do if it doesn't start, except check that every connector and hose is reattached correctly. Let the engine run for a bit and check for leaks, clonking, and just any signs that something is wrong. After a couple of minutes a lot of smoke started coming from my engine, but I could tell from the smell that it was just WD40 that I'd been spraying like there was no tomorrow. It takes literally a couple of hours to stop smoking if you sprayed around the exhaust manifold area trying to un-seize bolts.

PREVENTING FUTURE OVERHEATING
Your head gasket failure was probably caused by the car overheating (not always, mine was). After I replaced the head gasket I was paranoid about the cooling system so I replaced the thermostat and the coolant temperature sensor because they're cheap and I wanted to be SURE that the fan and radiator would work properly. I had suspected a faulty temperature gauge/sender, and with hindsight I'm pretty sure the shop I was taking the car to was just replacing things one after another until there was nothing left to replace (it still overheated). When I first started the car up after the rebuild I noticed the temp gauge climb pretty quickly (within a few minutes) until it was close to the red. I was about to start testing the fan, water pump, thermostat, etc, when my wife convinced me to buy a non-contact infrared thermometer ($50 from Sears). By pointing this thing at the thermostat housing I could tell that the car wasn't really overheating, and it was OK that the thermostat hadn't opened because it was only at about 140F even though the temp gauge on the dash said "Ouch, HOT!". A few minutes later the thermostat opened (upper coolant hose got hot) and all was well, and I soon learnt to ignore the temp gauge because it's not working properly (probably never has been, because it used to like to fluctuate for no reason). I was running the car in the garage on a warm day, and when the fan started up I couldn't have been happier. This proved that the coolant temperature sender was working, and that the fan was working. The infrared thermometer was reading about 200F, thus giving me further confidence that the car was running at a normal operating temperature. A little more bleeding and I was done with the coolant system, at least for now.

**Note added afterwards: there is a second temperature sender on the right corner of the rear cylinder head that controls the gauge on the dash independently of the fan/computer.

Good luck.

Jim Lockwood 5/6/04

[kevinb70]

kudos to doing your own work!

I just did my intake gaskets this weekend. There were signs of an ever so slightest leak from all 4 ends of the intake. But not enough where I had to add coolant. Also had sludge in the reservoir and at the pressure cap - GM supposedly says that only develops when you let the coolant get low, but my reservoir has never been empty.

All of Saturday, ended the night flushing the coolant after assembling the lower intake, then spent 4 hours on Sunday wrapping things up.

Also a little bit of coolant can leak out when removing the intake. After I was done I did an oil change. Then drove to the store to pick up engine flush, filter, and oil and did a SECOND oil change just to make sure I got the traces of coolant out of the crankcase. Call it insurance, well worth the little extra money.

The one thing i couldnt where does that tiny rubber cap go? it looks like a vacuum hose endcap but i know it was stuck on the end of a protruding bolt somewhere near the throttle body. After I was finished I only had 3 left over parts, and quickly found where they went: throttle body-I took one bolt&nut out but didnt remove it from the intake (i thought the cap went there but it was too loose fitting), the other nut was the coolant bypass pipe bracket running along the engine that bolts to the head.

A tip: even though I bought an injector o-ring kit, I didn't need to take off the fuel rail & injectors. I just left them on there.

Hindsight is 20/20: I should have used my dremel with the *plastic* brush attachemnt for those gaskets. 30,000 rpm and a couple of brushes ought to do the job! I spent a good leisurely 2 hours with the gaskets. Gasket remover helped a little bit. I used a thin foil-type razor blade.

I used a digital camera all the way - take pics of all angles especially the rear of the engine so you know for sure which bolts, wires, etc go and the best way to route wires.

I don't know about felpro gaskets, but the intake set I got from NAPA (Victor Reinz) there are aluminum spacers embedded on each end of the gaskets, presumable to prevent squashing the intake gasket, the original did NOT have those spacers, just an empty hole, where they SHOULD have been. Defective design I think.

All in all, I didn't run into any surprises and have everything I needed beforehand. I had planned on doing this the weekend prior but had the lower egr gasket on order and it rained anyway that weekend. BTW there are two different looking gaskets to the egr, you won't need the tube unless you break it somehow.

When I get home today I'm going to check my bleed screws one more time to make sure all the air is out of the cooling system.

Happy ending: my car started on the first crank also! (I switched it on and off a few time, then hit the fuel system shrader valve to make sure fuel would come out... then tried cranking it. I did forget to connect the plastic connector to the alternator and required a jump the next day because the battery was not charging.

[MC Punisher]

Well, I tend to get a little long winded when it comes to the details of writing out instructions myself, but you win. Haha! Hey, bravo though man! Thankfully, I've done my lower intake manifold before, so I knew what to do. However, I had to take a swan dive back into it to do my head gasket now. Your patience though, far away is mine because I don't think I could have remembered all the details without recording myself while I was doing it.

Although this post is 15+ years old, I did want to throw out a little something for those who may stumble across this post and still need to read it. When cleaning everything, don't forget to clean out the EGR port from the intake plenum. It's not a straight shot, but rather it hooks off to one side and will tend to get clogged up all the way so the gases cannot escape and recirculate from the EGR. I cleaned mine a while back and got to one of those situations where you couldn't even put anything through it.

There's my two cents. Again, bravo on the post! Well written. 👍

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