Oh boy - I blew my head gasket last night and I am digging in today and im gonna do the change and I am just wondering what kind of tricks that you have or know of that might help me along the way. Its a 97 z24.
Thank You All
clear your weekend and search. its a long time consuming process
Do yourself a favor and buy a Chiltons or Haynes manual.
Rob
Sold 2/2/05
im getting the feeling its nearly time to do this as well...getting sick of dumping a bottle of bar's leak in every two weeks...but hey...it works....
Dont forget to put in new head studs, swell as using a torque stick to do it with.
how many miles do you have on?
mine blew at 187,000
97 Z24 2.4L Automatic
it aint that bad, couple of bolts, some grease, few screws, couple of connectors...
oh and a weekend, a friend, case of beer, bloody knuckles, and lots of cursing and throwing of tools.
its a royal pain in the ass, but by changing it yourself you will gain a lot of knowledge and confidence in working on cars, I know i did when working on my brothers neon. i found it to be more time consuming than difficult. took me and my brother about 12 straight hours and that included a couple of other fixes to the car, and it was our first time taking on a project like that.
have fun with it and let us know how it all comes out
You'll never touch God's hand
You'll never taste God's breath
Because you'll never see the second coming
Life's too short to be focused on insanity
I've seen the ways of God
I'll take the devil any day
Hail Satan
(slayer, skeleton christ, 2006)
yay - i got my head off and its very dirty and there is gunk all over the top of the pistons - is it safe to just wipe that off and soap and water the head...
and you guys were not kiding about pain in the ass. every nuckle is bleeding and my head is about to explode but I think im pullin an all nighter to put it back together. So I will probably be posting a few questions....
oh and what worries me is that my car only has 148 000 kms and I take really good care of it and dont bag the crap out of it. so im hoping this is a one time kinda deal.
thanks for all your support
head gaskets are hit and miss for failures, some go at 60k miles , some last till 200k
and for the piston thing, id avoid soap and water, but rather, me and my brother used carb cleaner to clean what we could, if you clean your carb with carb cleaner, it gets injested anyways, so whats the difference
oh and yes, make sure your timing system goes on right...no room for error on that one
You'll never touch God's hand
You'll never taste God's breath
Because you'll never see the second coming
Life's too short to be focused on insanity
I've seen the ways of God
I'll take the devil any day
Hail Satan
(slayer, skeleton christ, 2006)
If you wanna clean the top of the pistons, use some Purple Power cleaner. For the studs that the head drops on, rotate the split so it faces towards the inside of the block. Clean everything down good, and use some copper spray before you put the new head on, you shouldn't have a problem anymore. Definitely get some new head bolts, they're a 1 time torque.
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take the head to a machine shop and have them magna flux it to make sure that it is good and have them machine the head to make sure that it is flat. and if you want since it is already off have them do a valve job. it's a good Idea
see ya!
Ok well thanks for all of your advice. I am just waiting on the new head bolts and timing chain tensioner shoe (which I broke into twenty thousand pieces).
My question is - about how much do you think it would be for a valve job... as that is sounding really tempting right now. And what gains would I see from that. Also I am turboing my car this spring im just waiting on delivery of the various parts, and I am wondering what a valve job would do for that.
Last but not least I am wondering how you guys put the timing chain back on as the haynes manual is not very detailed for this. I just reallly dont wanna screw up the timing.
Thank You All Again Soooooo Much
