Head Gasket Need quick turnaround

[Aztran]

My brothers head gasket let go yesterday, got same van as mine but a 97' plate.......

We are going Drag Racing THURSDAY afternoon and have started to give it a go ourselves with the help of Haynes and our mechanic dad who can only 'pop' in to have a look now and again! Obviously the torking of the head/ tappits ect are being done by someone else, but we are doin the donkey work off ripping it apart ......

Any pointers much appreciated, we are 'trying' to avoid taking the engine out or removing parts we can 'work around'.....

Its a long shot we can get it back together for Thursday but we gonna give it a go.

[100ps_drw_hicube]

mate i done it by my self the 1st time the hardest part was getting all the exhaust off if your using a power tool try not to snap any studs off other than that it is a fairly straight forward job just make sure who ever torques it down gets it right as mine needed more than what it says in the book

[Aztran]

How long it take u?

We know the basics of de-assembly but need this done by afternoon Thursday then the 90 mile drive to Santa Pod haha gonna be a bit sketchy i think.........

[madmark]

it wont take you long ,the hardest bit is the tappets for you, you should be able to do them yourself as well ,the book will tell you how ,as 100ps says make shure those head bolts are tight! goodluck

[Aztran]

Thanx for the input.....

Is there any other parts we need to check? Obviously the engine got very hot and spued oil/ water out all over the road...but the van was driven 8 miles to my house

Really hope we can get this done, got our tarp/van/ gazebo set up to try out

[MrMPuk]

You maywell have warped the head then!

[Aztran]

Soon as it comes off, its going straight to the engineers for skimming, hopefully wont be to buggered.

Reckon we will have the head off tonight and back tomorrow afternoon (fingers crossed), ready to 'attempt' to put it back together...........

[gemini]

dont have it skimmed if it dont need it, let them test it first

[Aztran]

Nah we wont, extra cost and valuable time wasted..................

[Nighthawk]

The head is quite a simple job really

tips

undo the 8 bolts holding the exhaust manifold to the head, much less likely to suffer a snapped bolt, you can tie the manifold back out of the way if you rope it to the N/S bonnet hinge

remember to remove the 40 torx bolt which goes through the timing cover into the head...it's the one above the water pump pulley

you don't need to touch anything else on the cover/belts

head torque from memory was 70Nm (52lbft), wait for 5 mins and recheck all bolts at 70Nm, then apply 90degrees of rotation to each bolt in sequence.

there is enough info on here to get the rest of it sorted

[100ps_drw_hicube]

remember to remove the 40 torx bolt which goes through the timing cover into the head...it's the one above the water pump pulley

thats the bugger i forgot about still i ended up smashing the cover off as the bolt wouldnt undo

[Aztran]

Just got the head off, no apparent damage to block or head, looks like gasket let go.....................

Its being checked tomorrow and if ok, we will be re-fitting tomorrow night for test AM thursday.

Hardest bit was taking manifold off, took us a while to work out u had to split the two halves haha.

Fingers crossed, Santa Pod here we come

[gemini]

did you get it fixed

[crazyscoot]

and did you get to the Pod?

[Nighthawk]

I do hope so.....or it's the most wrongly named thread EVER!