I used a plastic putty knife from Home Depot and plenty of Brake Cleaner. A little chicken of anything to hard on that deck/mating surface. With a little patience and elbow grease mine came out pretty clean.

 

I think the brass wire brush will be okay. I used one to clean the sealing surface for the oil cooler on another 944 i worked on. It came out fine, no damage to the block or anything. Ill give it all a shot tomorrow.

Tom, i would have bought those fixed back seats from you but this headgasket job effectivley killed my budget. Motor mounts are good and the oil pan isnt leaking to badly yet. Rod bearings are on the plate for next summer along with a 3pc crossmember ive had sitting in my closet for a year.

Dont think i am going to make the auto-x on the 22nd. Saturday im stuck at school most of the day and probably wont have time to finish this.. hoping to get up early sunday and get everyything back together by noon time. The maiden voyage will probably be a trip down to Tobay to watch.

 

Spent the day and cleaned up the sealing surfaces, with the advice of everyone i passed on the brass dremel attachment. I hit everything i could reach with a razor blade. I got pretty good at using this the last time i needed to remove the intake manifold gaskets which literally fused to the head. Anyhow it came out well and i flushed the oil and debris that fell into the waterjacket out. Gave all four cylinder walls a coat of oil also.

I also replaced the heater control valve..very easy when you have half of the motor taken apart . Also got around to doing the fuel lines finally. Also cleaned up the mess of powersteering fluid, gunk and grease that seems to accumulate on the passenger side frame rail.

My father is dropping off the cylinder head tomorrow at the machine shop for new guides, stem seals and to be cleaned up in general. Cant wait to get this thing back together saturday and sunday...ive been itching to drive it. My friend let me drive his '06 M3 last night as i was talking to him about being in driving withdrawl. He let me drive the car to my friends house as we went to go pick him up...its nice and fast, but in some weird way it dosent compare to my car .





I am happy to say i think i am passed all of the hard stuff. The one last little 'speed bump' i want to get past is torquing down the cylinder head. Going to pick up the angle gauge this weekend for the two 90 degree passes. Once im passed that, i think its just going to be juggling the cam housing and the lifters as i install it onto the head. Then i think im home free.. . Of course until it comes time to fire it up.. and there is that very nervous moment as it cranks..and i hope i dont hear a loud bang of the engine blowing up in a mushroom cloud

 

How does the right angle pipe look for the coolant flowing back to the heater core? I found it a perfect time to replace at this point, as mine was rotting. It'll make the cooling system that much more reliable, plus Porsche has them new.

 

The pipe was in good shape, but had some corrosion around the barbed end. I cleaned it up with a wire wheel attachment on my dremel. The cooalnt pipe that goes over the headers had the same problem.

 

I put another 6 or 7 hours in today, all on reassembly. Ran into a few hang ups but all have been solved. Let me first say that getting the headers lined up with the cylinder head is a major pain in the butt. I had to angle the cylinder head slightly to get the flange into the studs. That took about 45 minutes of screwing around. Second was i put the bolt and nut combo on backwards on the spring tensioner (i was changing the roller). The bolt stud kept getting caught on the block and it took me probably another hour to figure out why it was going this. I was also really lucky my dad was home and was able to help me put the cam carrier back in.. getting that sucker seated was a pain also.

Anyhow i am probably 85% done. I just need to verify the tension on the timing belt and put on the balance, alterantor and PS belt. Then its just putting the rest of the intake back on and it should be ready to fire up.







My back is freaken killing me! Its funny because last night i was thinking i can start at 10am and be done by 4pm about. I find it really is true that you take your estimated time and double it..that is usually the actual time!

 

Triple the time is more like it. i started to cut the pine tree on my lawn today. it starts as one then has five trunks each about 25 to 30 feet tall. got half of one down and in black bags in three hours.

almost took cable and the phone lines too.

stop by tomorrow if you get a chance, with or without the 944. head looks good.

 

Tom, going to try and make it down there around 12 - 1pm to watch. Should be a a perfect maiden voyage.

Dissapointed i wont be running, was going to use the old Dunlops you gave me.

 

How much was your head machine work?

 

Yeah I'm interested. Did you get the guides etc replaced too? Sorry couldn't work out the head this time. Sucks when the boss can be a dick

 

Yeah I'm interested... Hope it wasn't $300. Did you get the guides etc replaced too? Sorry couldn't work out the head this time. Sucks when the boss can be a dick

 

The work came out to $140 plus the valve guides and stem seals which i bought. So all said and done it came out to about $200. The machine shop did a great job on the head, cleaned it up nicely. The price was also the 'shop price' though my fathers shop account.

The car is running and everything seems alright so far.

 

Cool, good work!

I wonder if I can do this coming head gasket in 3 hrs... practice makes perfect

 

Well i just put about 100 miles on the car today and its running fine. I think i need to rebleed the coolant system as i am getting some spikes in temperature. In particular when i come to a stop and sit for a bit on a downward incline. My temp gauge that reads off the upper radiator hose spikes to about 210 or so, my dash gauge read at about slightly higher than the halfway mark. Make an air pocket or something.

Startup was very smokey. All of the oil that dropped onto the headers took about 10 minutes to finally all burn off.



Other than whats probably air in the cooling system, the car is running great. I no longer get the cloud of blue-ish smoke from oil being blown out the exhaust at high RPMs..thinking the rebuilt head fixed that.

 

Just wondering if this sounds like its just air in the cooling system.

Crusing around town and on the highway my dash temp gauge never goes higher than the first white line. I have a aftermarket gauge tapped into the upper radiator hose and it never goes much higher than 190 degrees.

As soon as i stop the car and sit at idle for maybe a minute or so, the temperature will rise up (at a steady pace) to roughly 210 degrees on my aftermarket gauge. The dash mounted gauge dosent get much higher than the 3rd white line but the last couple of times it did this, it didnt go past halfway.

I am having no other problems with the cooling system. No loss of coolant or anything like that. Just seems like its running a bit hotter than it was before the headgasket problem.

Ill have to try bleeding the air out a few more times this weekend. Think i may borrow a pressure tester.