The other battle- and battle is the right word- was with the oil lines to the thermostat for the front oil cooler.
One look at the steel nut to the aluminum thermostat and I knew it was going to be trouble. I had hit it with PB Blaster a few days ago but I didn’t even bother trying with the wrenches. First thing I did was get the torch and cherry-up the nut. In a rare failure for the fire-wrench, that did not work. I was putting way too much torque on the nut - there’s not an easy way to hold back in an opposing way - and it still did not break loose. I ended up using a whizzer to cut through most of the threads, went further with the hand hacksaw, and then air chiseled the slot in a CCW direction and got them loose.
No thread damage. But turns out Mobil 1 15/50 stinks worse than LSD gear oil if that can be believed if it gets over 400*F like it did when that nut was glowing. Just got back in from supermarket and the house reeks of it.
Here they are on the ground. No doubt they were accessories to the leakage. Good riddance.
Here is the assortment of tools required for the job. Not a trivial one at all. Go slow
