Head Gasket Repalcement (with Pictures)

[SupaStealth]

Hey everyone!,

Well, i got my Head gasket replacement kit today, i took a picture of all the stuff included.



I'm hoping I can get started tomorrow. My Dad and I are currently looking for a Kerosene heater for the garage. It'd help out a lot since it's been in the teens for high's.

I'll keep ya posted,
Joe

[Marc]

I hope that the job goes OK.


______________

GM!!! BRING BACK OLDS!!!

[stevensolds]

^^^

Wow that looks like a lot of stuff. Thats awesome you are a DIY man. I could have saved a assload of cash if i couldve done all the stuff on my car myself i paid 2 grand labor for 2 grand of parts.

[omegaic]

You are a better man than I for tackling that job. I'm sure you have the whole of the board rooting for you!

[JimW]

Good luck Joe, man that looks like a daunting task, we're rooting for sure!

[w3rk5]

Good luck on that SupaStealth. I wish I had the knowledge,skills, and confidence to work on my car like that.

[erw38]

Best of luck to ya!

[SupaStealth]

Thanks everyone , I'm just waiting on my service manuals to get here, The lady said she shipped it on the 30th of December so i'm thinkin' it should be here any day now. I'm sure after we get the Torpedo heater today i'll be gettin' the garage all straightened up so i have a nice area to work in.

[SupaStealth]

Okay, i just got my Service manual today, all i can say is wow, there are a lot of fricken special tools. this is starting to look bad. everything looks fine up until where it says that i have to remove the Crankshaft Balancer and Oil pump... i'll write the list of steps for everyone.

1. Remove the powertrain assembly
2. Remove intake manifold
3. Remove left and right camshaft covers
4. Remove the crankshaft balancer
5. Remove the engine front cover
6. Remove the oil pump
7. Remove the chain tensioner from the secondary drive chain for the cylinder head being removed
8. Remove the camshaft sprockets from the head being removed. The secondary drive chain should remain in the crankcase.
9. Remove the timng chai guides. Access to the retaining screws is through the plugs at the front of the cylinder head.
10. Remove water crossover.
11. Remove left and right exhaust manifold
12. Remove cylinder head bolts
13. Remove cylinder head
14. Remove the cylinder head gasket

so yeah, from what i see are about $400 worth of special tools, if not more. and what sucks even more... i'm leaving for school in 10 days, hah.

i'm goina get the garage cleaned and go get some propane for the heater, then see what my dad thinks

[kobalt]

I don't want to discourage you but realize that you're tackling a major, major project. A headgasket job is difficult enough on a simple OHV motor in a RWD car . (read: one camshaft and both cylinder banks accessible) But with the Aurora we're taliking DOHC and FWD This means the engine has to come out (from the bottom!) to get to the rear cylinder bank, and you must properly align FOUR seperate camshafts not only with eachother but also with the crank. Nothing a good mechanic couldn't handle but I personally would not tackle this job without access to a lift. Good luck.

[SupaStealth]

yeah, i figured i could do it but i don't have access to the lift (although i do have a few friends that would allow me to use theirs), and by the way things are adding up i don't have the time, since i am leaving in 10 days for school. heh, looks like i'm not going to be getting a computer for school. if this was the middle of summer though i could tackle this job since my friends would be done with automotive school (one at UTI and one at Wyotech). as we speak, i'm calling some trusted automotive repair shops.

[SupaStealth]

well, i got ahold of a guy, he said $850 which in my book, is cheap, it turns out i got a better deal on the head gasket set than he could by like $100, lol, then i'm goina get my thermostat and radiator replaced. He'll start that on monday then, i still kinda wish i could do it, but i guess i have the peace of mind knowing that it's getting done right, and if it's not i can bring it back and have them redo it at their expense, lol.

[kobalt]

Make sure to get some type of warranty in writing - $850 is almost to good to be true.

[scottydl]

No doubt that you saved money on the parts... at least you'll always have that peace-of-mind! I second what kobalt mentioned about SOME kind of written warranty, no matter how short, just to cover your butt (so to speak).

[stevensolds]

850 is great. I would defintely do that. F the DIY on this project, id probably forget to put the oil pump or some crap back on and the engine would break.

[SupaStealth]

Yeah, these guys did my mom's car, same thing (head gasket), they are very thourogh (or however ya spell it) they run it at idle for an hour or so and then drive it for a good ten miles or more. Very trustworthy people.

[SupaStealth]

Well, i just dropped off my car , it feels wierd that someone else is goina be workin' on my car. oh well. So here's the scoop. Along with the head gasket job, they're also going to replace the radiator, check the heater core, put in a new thermostat and of course change my oil and coolent. They'll be starting as soon as they open up at 9am Monday. Heh, i told the guy to feel free to give me another 50hp (he installs performance stuff for GM). So when its all done she'll be runnin' like new.

[erw38]

Ask him if he will give us (ACNA members) group discounts on performance stuff. You never know. ;D
Then you can be our ginuea pig!

[SupaStealth]

lol, i'll ask that when i go and check on everything on monday

[Isnibs]

SupaStealth said:

lol, i'll ask that when i go and check on everything on monday

I figured that you would be stood standing there, with a camera over his shoulder.
;D

[Aurora40]

If it were me, I would take advantage of this and have the exhaust manifolds extrude honed since they will be off the car. However, with a 10-day window, maybe that's not feasible.

Was this mechanic familiar with the timeserting process or at least aware of it? It's one thing if he feels it isn't always warranted, and another if he doesn't know the Premium V8 has a habit of ruining the block threads when the heads are removed (once you've timeserted, though, these should last more than one mounting/dismounting from what I understand)?

[SupaStealth]

if i were paying for this and not my dad, i would definitely consider extrude honing the exhaust manifolds, i'm already sucking my parents dry for school. . When i go in i'll ask him about timeserting.

[erw38]

OkI admit that I'm not the brightest bulb in the theater, but could someone please explain to me (in lamens term of course) what timeserting is?

[Marc]

Timeserting is a method of repairing stripped threads.
Info at www.timesert.com


______________

GM!!! BRING BACK OLDS!!!

[erw38]

Thanks :-)

Ten more posts and I'll be at a little more than 1/10 the mileage of my car.

[Aurora40]

Your car only has 10,000 miles on it??

[erw38]

Aurora40 said:

Your car only has 10,000 miles on it??

Oops! Make that 1/100!
Just a slight typo on my part. I seem to make a lot of typos, but not one mistake my whole life! ;D ;D

[SupaStealth]

i took some pictures for everyone today, as well as for myself




nice starter underneeth the intake manifold


One thing though, well, actually a few things, when they pulled the engine and drained the oil, there wasn't much oil in it, i think in one of the pictures you can see the blue drain pan, whatever's in there was all that was in my engine, i know i put the recamended amount of oil in it when i changed it. So they're thinking there's an oil leak.

they asked me who said that it had a bad head gasket, and how they tested it. from what they can see as of the last time i checked, they found no visible evidence that they would be bad. so both the mechanic and i are thinkin' the other shop was just tryin' to get money out of me. which is wierd cause it's kinda one of my brother's friends, but he might've screwed him over somehow, ya never know with my brother, anyways...

they didn't have the special tools so they were only able to remove the engine, tomorrow they're having a tech guy from a Caddy dealer come in and see what he thinks, on the phone he said that these engines hardly ever go through head gaskets so he's goina have a look over tomorrow.

also he said i needed some new front rotors, which i kinda already knew, the lowest price he could find was $69 each for the fronts i found a set of cross drilled and slotted rotors on ebay for 75 bucks a pair and 25 for shipping, so i snatched them up, just hoping i can get them before the 17th since i have to be in Milwaukee the morning of the 18th.

[kobalt]

Just goes to show you how shops want to screw you over at every opportunity. Luckily these guys seem more honest. Good pics, btw. As for the oil leak, you can see some leakage around the valvecover as well as the front main seal. However it does not look serious from the pics.

[SupaStealth]

Woohoo, got my car back today, it still torques me off knowing that the other shop mis-diagnosed the bad head gasket, the guy said if i woulda brought it to a dealer it would've costed close to $4000. i could buy a 4.6L N* crate motor for $2600... so yeah, the head gaskets were fine, they had no reason to take out the engine, but they did it because i said what the other shop said. oh well, live and learn i guess, i know i have a trusting mechanic now too, which is good. so what did i get? well, a new radiator, new 5&2 coilpack (it was cracked a bit), new thermostat and housing, new FPR, and a new oil pan seal. it seems to run fine now, it still hesitates a bit though, on sunday i'm goina have a friend of mine that just got done with UTI check the MAF sensor. although it could just be the cold whether, it's about -1⁰F right now, which is the high for today, tomorrow i think it's goina be about -6⁰F for the high.