For those that have answered my posts over the lastfewweeks, thank you very much. The head gasket on the '97 SOHC is done. I put in new belts. Hopefully they are doen stretching. I ended up having to retighten them after a week and the belts on these things are a real pain to tighten. Give me a spring loaded tensioner any day. The majority of the oil leak was from the oil pressure switch and that's been fixed. The spring loaded vent selector switch turned out to be a bent/frayed cable. I straightened it out with a pair of pliers and used silver solder to keep it from fraying more. It's working now. It didn't look like it would be a lot of fun to get to the other end of that cable. So, hopefully that will hold. The car's running GREAT!!!

Now my question. It's still leaking oil from the rear main. I'm assuming to get to it you have to drop the tranny. This is an automatic. The driver's side drive axle looks too short to take it loose without taking it loose at the wheel first. However, it looks like it might be possible to just pry the passenger side axle out at the transmission. Is it? What else need to come loose to get the tranny far enough out to get to the rear main?

 

Gotta drop the tranny to get to the RMS.

 

you can pop the axels out of the tranny with them still connected to the hubs....you just have to use an angledpry bar

 

I was afraid of that. I may tell the sister in-law that she's gotten her last major repair out of me. She can afford a couple quarts of oil a month. Expect to see more posts from me, if I change my mind. I said I wasn't going to do the head gasket too. Now to tackle the A/C.