THe flaw with that whole process is that the petc0ck doesn't drain diddly crap. Will be curious if you just get worn down with it all or not. Unfortunately, I find myself having to drail my system for this or that often enough that there is always nice fresh coolant in it.

 

True. Even the article above mentions it only drains about half the system. Which seems about right because I got about 1.5 gallons of fluid out when I drained mine that way. However, if I do this method as mentioned 4-5 times then I should see good clean water coming out. I will say that the fluid I drained did look pretty good. I drained it through a paint filter and into a clean 5 gallon bucket so I can reuse it. I may just do that and hold on to the diluted stuff I got from the dealer.

That does suck that you’ve had to do this process many times. Hopefully you’ve just completed your last flush.

 

Just finished putting my engine back together. One thing I’ll note is that the timing chain did not have any obvious plated links. So I put the #1 piston to tdc, made sure the cams on the right bank were aligned, then aligned the left cams. I installed the chain and turned the engine several times and the left cam arrows lined up every time.

So far I have a whole 10 miles on the new head. It feels weird driving with no check engine light. I’ve ignored the p0304 cel for about 3 years now. Let’s see what else pops up that I’ll have to fix. It is a dodge so I’m sure something will come up.

 

What brand timing kit did you use? that is very strange the new timing chain didn't have plated links to line up with the marks. I do think though that if you get those, i believe it is, 12 link pins between the cam phasers, you really can't get the chain messed up cuz there's just not enough slack to misalign the chain links at the crank sprocket.

I am curious, how was the chain tensioner between the crank and oil pump? on mine, both those little plastic arms that hold the chain guide to the tensioner were broken off, and that seems to be a common issue.

 

I reused the stock timing stuff. All of it looked fine. The plastic guides, tensioner, chain… all looked great. I did want to replace it but my gut told me that it was fine. If I do need to replace it one day then I can do that in an afternoon or so.