To catch everyone up here, I bought Mouse about 2-3 months ago, I got it home and the first thing I did was replace the radiator because the seal for the radiator cap was crumbling and falling into the radiator which was bone dry, I tried replacing it with one from O'Reilly's and it didn't fit, I then just decided to get one off amazon. This one fit perfectly and looks great. [Radiator I used that fit] I then had to move onto the next problem, the truck was leaking a quart of oil every week, I looked along the side of the valve cover while the truck was running to find where the leak could be coming from and saw a bunch of oil along the back side of the valve cover, I also noticed a really mean exhaust leak coming from that area. To try to fix this I took off the heat shroud to discover that I was missing 3 exhaust manifold bolts, I went to
O'Reilly's and bought some bolts but they only had two in stock. I put in those two bolts and its really helped with the leak. When I started the motor I heard a knocking noise whenever I got anywhere above 50% throttle, I obviously got really worried until I found out it was that the previous owner had too small of an air filter in the good ol pizza pan. I also somewhere in there removed the valve cover and started painting it, don't judge too hard, it was my first time painting anything and I did it in a hotel parking lot with some help of my dad. I just got the valve cover back on and next step is registration, praying I pass smog, and then I can get into some more modifications for the motor!