jmporsche944

Well, some may have read my post about losing coolant, so the head came off today. Looks like I found my problem, the valve in the cylinder I was getting low compression on is covered in white, which I assume is due to the coolant burning. Here are some pictures:







Soo, new gaskets come friday from paragon. I cant wait to get it back together. Either way its been a great learning experience tearing this down. Wish me luck on the reassembly!

Jeff

The DareDevil

You have conquered it.

Porsche-O-Phile

You sure that guy living under your hood wasn't causing the problem?

Yabo

Looks like fun. Sometimes I wonder if I should've just gone that route, rather then doing a whole rebuild... but I guess I wanted to torture myself.

jmporsche944

I guess the guy living under the hood could have been drinking the coolant, but he would be dead now wouldnt he?

In all seriousness.. anything else I should do "while im in here" besides replacing the gaskets?

theedge

Uh, standing on the headlight bar is a bad idea...

lilredpo

Hammer???

For waking up bolts I assume.

jmporsche944

I wasn't standing on the headlight bar

Theres a lip there in front of the headlight bar... open your hood much?

Yes the hammer was for waking up the bolts.. and for pounding those damn exhaust manifolds out of the way... barely enough clarence to get them off the studs with the head in the car.

michaelathome

Oh, something to keep in mind.. When you are putting it all back together, get the manifold ligned up and get all the nuts threaded and up against the pipe flange. If you don't there is barely enough room to get the left side nuts on past the curve of the pipe.

Pipes lined up at the end of the bolts, thread nuts, wiggle/walk the pipes up the bolts tightening the nuts as you go, finally tighten down as necessary.

Guess how I learned that one?

I do have the cast iron headers so that may have had something to do with it.

Michael

peterbojo

jmporsche944 I'm getting ready to do the same thing to mine any advise i should know beofre I begin.

jmporsche944

Thanks for the advice michael!

peterbojo - Just follow the instructions on clarks-garage.com... When you take the cam tower off, put grease on the end of the allen key so the bolts dont fall in... you will be taking it off anyway incase a few fall, i still use the grease though. When you put the cam tower back in, put grease around the lifters to keep them in place so they dont fall out. Also put grease on the end of the allen key again so the bolts dont fall off and into the cam tower, youd have to take the whole thing off again! For the head... once the cam tower and intake manifold are off, its just 10 nuts and a few allen bolts and it comes off. Some say that its easiest to remove the headers with the head. They say you can disconnect the headers from the rest of the exhaust by the 6 bolts holding them to the next piece of exhaust. I found it easier to remove the bolts that hold it to the head and just push it back as far as possible. Then removed the bolts that hold the head to the block and wiggle it out. Hopefully those tips help, im sure someone else could chime in that has more experience then me and help you out more. Thats all I can think of right now. Good luck!

peterbojo

ok one more question would it be easier taking the header bolts off from under the car. Where I'm going to be doing the work has a lift. I was just wondering

jmporsche944

I would say its definatly easier from the top if your talking about where it connects to the head. If your talking about the ones that connect to the next part of the exhaust, then its definatly easier from the bottom.

Russian Rocket

That's some work. I'll have to do the same on Rabbit in the next coupla weeks because i screwed up my head studs when putting another header on GL with your adventure.

michaelathome

You going to Waterfest this weekend? http://www.waterfest.net I bet you could pick up some parts at a decent price.

Michael