In anticipation of the new manifold and muffler arriving, last weekend Fenn and I took off the old manifold and finally this week the new ones arrived.    The manifold nuts holding on the old one were very rusted and I was concerned the studs would break off when trying to remove them so for the previous week or so I'd spray each with some penetrating oil.  The family got a chuckle when I'd tell them I was heading outside to put some penetrating oil on my nuts.  Anyway, three nuts came off and three studs came out of the block with the nuts tightly rusted to the threads.  I went to Tacoma Screw in Kent this week and picked up new studs to replace the three that came out.  The old manifold was in remarkably bad shape.  Here's another picture of the back side.  Not much exhaust was coming out the stack.

No wonder it was so loud 

Here's the new manifold and muffler that arrived.  Today I'll clean off the manifold and put some hi-temp paint on it.  I expect the paint to burn off the exhaust portion but hopefully the intake portion will stay cool enough to hold the paint.  We'll see.

Last weekend was really tough, we had to put down Agate, our 33 year old swayback horse.  In his younger years he was a competition and then schooling horse.  We bought him when he was fifteen and being retired.  He was a great riding horse that you could hop on bareback after not being ridden for a long time and he was a perfect gentleman.  Over the past few years his age was catching up with him and his back began to cause him problems.  Finally last weekend he began losing coordination in his back legs and was having a lot of trouble standing.  The vet came out early Sunday morning and said he wouldn't improve so we made the right but very difficult decision to put him down.  Eldon our neighbor that afternoon came over with his backhoe and we buried him out in the back of our hay field.

Rest in peace old friend, you will be missed.