Gonna need to have my head checked and maybe machined a bit
- Thread starter glhs837
- Start date
All empty now. Want to make sure he wont feed me to the fishes if'n I show up with a head from a BMW.
He's got another machinist, Dave, working there now. Ole Dave needs the money. ;-) He's continually upgraded the shop too..has a very nice crank grinder, for example.
would they rebuild a motor ?
Haven't touched it.
I'm not sure...they've built a few over the years but all very high-performance usually. But with the other guy working in the shop, they might want more throughput so..
due to a poor piston design by Saturn, the stock pistons do not have oil drain holes in the bottom ring
so over time the oil trapped bakes into a crust sticking the rings.
I am sure after 244,000 miles there is a bit of wear and compression loss as well
but the car will still get 34 mpg on the highway and 30-32 going back and forth to work
Wow. I have not seen a lack of drain holes in the oil ring lands since back in the 1930 engine designs.
glhs837
Power with Control
But you do have glass headlights
Gilligan, your contact is going to help me out. Now I just need to get enough garage cleaned out to get the victim in there. Got the special tools needed on order.
HTH. He's got some nice machines.
glhs837
Power with Control
Yeah, to take the head off requires a special socket, a 3 inch long E12 socket. I have this dream that the head is flat, and I don't need to disturb the variable timing valve train. Really dont want to take that sort of time. So I need the special tools to keep the valve train locked in while it's off the car. Of course, it it's not flat, then I might as well have it cleaned up some above just getting it flat
glhs837
Power with Control
Okay, got the head off. Victor Reinz gasket, which means that someone has been into the motor before. Those are not bad gaskets, so I dont think that was the problem. But the head bolts, most of those seemed to require far less force to remove than I would expect from bolts done to I think 60 ftlbs, then twice more to 90 degrees, you use a protractor for the final torque. I suspect they reused the stretch to yield one time use bolts. Now to get the heada over to the guy Gilligan turned me onto to have the head checked and flattened if need be.
glhs837
Power with Control
Cant really tell, but suspect that it's the bolts. But no way I feel good reusing that gasket, since I'm in this deep. I suppose I'll back the car out of the garage and hit the block with a hose in all the passages, hope to get as much of that crap out as possible.
glhs837
Power with Control
Well, the mystery deepens. Looking at the gasket, it looks to be incorrect. It was blocking maybe 1/2 or better of all the cooling passages between the head and block. Car was built 5/98. But looking at Rock Auto, which is great for visual comparisons, it seems there was a change in the motor that took place in 9/98, which added all the cooling passages. So the car has had a motor swap at some point. But whomever did the head gasket job evidently didn't bother to look closely and just bought the gasket by build date.