Okay, so I'm bolting it back up now. The first torque stage is 20Nm, and I have a shiny new torque wrench which has that as its minimum setting. 20Nm just doesn't feel like a lot.
Is that definitely right? Just a bawhair over finger tight, then 90°, then 90° again?
I once followed a P38 in my Citroën through a flooded road in Greenock where the police were letting 4x4s through but turning cars away - he spotted the "legs go up" moment as I flicked the switch to raise the old CX up to "rock hard but 18" ground clearance" setting :-)
Fixed now. I need to dig into how to restart nginx when the certificate is automagically renewed.
No, there are only a couple of badly dished followers just now. What I am considering doing is sticking some not-quite-so-bad followers in for now and replacing the whole damn lot in a few paycheque's time.
While "everyone knows" it'll chew the camshaft up in the first ten seconds of running the engine, in practice it doesn't make a bit of difference. Same with pushrods - the TB for replacing miscast rockers says to replace the pushrods only if they're damaged. If they're fine, leave them alone. But surely the ends of the pushrods have worn to fit the old rockers, so you'd need to replace the pushrods too, right? And then the tappets would have worn to fit the pushrods, so you'd replace those, and the camshaft, and cam chain, and so on and so on.
I suspect that's a bit "theoretical". The camshaft is probably going to be coming out in the next few months anyway if it's that bad.
It's only a couple that are badly dished that I can see. The cam lobes themselves look not too bad, surprisingly.
The gasket on the passenger side is okay, but having both heads off will let me clean all the oily mud and pondweed out and lap the valves in, which might make two or three metric brake catpower of an improvement.
So kicking the box with the valves stabbed through the top across the kitchen and scattering them in all directions isn't that big a deal then :-D
Does it make a lot of difference which valve goes in which cylinder, if I'm lapping them in anyway?
Not yet. Having found a fairly chunky blow between 2 and 4, and 6 and 8 (and of course the blow to atmosphere from 6) I'm considering taking the other head off for a look - for the sake of 30 quid for another gasket and set of bolts for that side, I may as well.
The tappets are a bit dished, but how much is too much? They're all smooth and shiny with no real wear marks on the cam but for example the number 8 exhaust tappet has its bottom dished by about 1mm, maybe a bawhair more.
It's actually cleaning up okay. After a bit of discussion with dhallworth who came out with more Jizer, silicone sealant and sympathy, I reckon I'd be daft not to just do both sides while it's as far apart as it is. There's quite clear evidence of a blow between cylinders 2 and 4, and between 6 and 8 (although nothing between 4 and 6). I wonder if that's where all my compression was going?
I had a couple of the cam followers out and while there are faint scuffs on the bottom - just enough to wipe off the machining marks - I can't see anything that looks like the pictures of worn cams or followers online. I'm coming to the conclusion that the cam must be pretty okay.
Slight blowing between cylinders wouldn't cause a loss of low-speed torque, would it?
I'll tell you what, the cam looks mint. There's a bit of a mark on the block though... :-/
Bits bought, except for the 5/8" socket :-) Let's see how it goes, dodging showers isn't really an option just now...
Local indy confirms that doing one side is just fine, and they have the bits I need in for 36 quid. Sounds like we have a winner.
I was wondering about only doing one side. I do expect to get back into it once the finances have recovered, so probably a ten quid blue box would be perfectly okay for the next few months.
Manifold heatshield is long gone, returned to the ore from whence it came :-) I replaced the manifold bolts with stainless Allen bolts when I did the exhaust manifold gaskets last year, which makes it a doddle - even the one behind the steering column!
I think I'll just go with whipping the heads off and getting them checked for flatness, then.
Orangebean - I wish I knew where you were seeing ARP studs for twice the price of bolts, the only bolts I can find are Shitpart ones for a tenner a set (tempting, if I'm going to get back in there soon, but I suspect it'll be sooner than I'd like) and the cheapest 10-stud set I can find is £150!
My GEMS 4.0 has started blowing to atmosphere from one of the driver's side cylinders. It's not quite as loud as Miah's was (yet!) but it's definitely doing it. Clearly I'm going to have to do the head gaskets, but since I actually need the car to run around in I need to get it done as quickly as possible. I've not really done one of these before (although I've changed heads before), so here's the list of daft questions:
Do I need to get the heads skimmed? Up until now it's been going pretty well without losing more than the expected amount of oil or water. I can probably find someone to check them for flatness nearby but they'll take a while to skim them.
When Miah and I leakdown tested it a few months back it was about 20% evenly across all eight cylinders. Is it worth dropping the sump off and doing the piston rings too? That starts to get into doing bigend and main bearings as well, I guess?
If I do pull the pistons out and stick new rings in, what do I need to do about the bores? I've read various things about using those three-legged grinding stones and bogbrush type hones to break the glaze, presumably that's pretty important if I disturb that part?
Not sure if it is standard or something that plod added but I've got a grommet near where the rubber tube goes to feed power to the upper tailgate that allowed me to run the cable from my magnetic aerial into the car above the headlining.
I'll have a look on mine once the car park drains below ankle depth.
The best one I've ever seen was an Aston Martin kicking about Glasgow with the registration number "V12 TOY"
"Aww there's a scuff in that door :-/" <wipes monitor> "Aha..."