head work questions

To repair my overheating problem this weekend I have gathered everything I could think of to get the job done. Since I have the head off, I have decided to do a mild home port and polish. Atleast do a gasket match of the intake/exhaust, then have a look at the combustion chamber. I am a little unsure about the combustion chamber, but once its off I’ll decide whether or not to do much in there.
So my question is.
Looking at my list below, is there anything else I will need/want in order to do this cleanly and properly?

Fel-Pro Gasket kit
1 water outlet
1 valve cover (perma-dry molded rubber gasket included)
1 throttle body mounting
1 head gasket
1 installation aid
1 EGR valve
15 grommet
12 O ring
1 EGR pipe
1 intake & exhaust manifold
12 intake & exhaust valve stem seals (polyacrylate things enclosed)
Fel-Pro Head bolt kit
14 total head bolts
Permatex
sensor safe ultra copper hi-temp RTV gasket maker
black RTV (what I use for dif gasket)
Loc-tite Blue
Various die grinder bits, and dremel tool with plenty of bits.

My concern is what I maybe missing in order to rebuild the head after P&P it, since I only have the gasket kit right now.

Starting this project tomorrow morning, and hoping to have it back on the road by Monday, but realistically need it ready by Wednesday.

[FONT=&quot]Thanks for any and all help on the subject.[/FONT]

If you're just cleaning and replacing, the list looks good except you won't need the EGR stuff.

Just make sure to torque the head down properly and in sequence. You do have the torque specs don't you? One or two of the bolts uses a different torque than the others. Been over a year and I don't remember.

Oh, and if you have it, use some copper head gasket spray. It helps seal the head gasket better.

While the Dremel will work neatly for polishing, you'll have trouble getting in far enough to remove material. Use an air die grinder for that, or a heavy electric die grinder (you use a Dremel like a pencil.)

Use some of the RTV copper on the manifold gasket to help it seal and to preserve the seal - it does help. Make sure you either re-use the original "dish" washers or get new Bellevilles for the manifold screws. Replace the screws as well - you can find my notes on that after a brief search here (and I think I went over them again in Muad'Dib's recent thread on replacing manifold studs.) A bit of RTV Copper on the EGR gasket can also help - I once had a vacuum leak that was Hell to trace - it was a burned-through EGR gasket (damn thing...)

What are the grommets for? I don't recall there being fifteen grommets on the top end (maybe two - for the CCV breathers. I don't think there are any more.) However, the Fel-Pro head gasket kit is fairly compleat. The "installation aid" is probably for the valve guide seals - it's a plastic sleeve with a closed, rounded end. You put that overtop the valve stem, and the you lubricate the new seal and install it (to help prevent damage from dragging the seal over the keeper grooves in the stem.) Be sure to use it!

The combustion chamber may be cleaned (head off) with a brass brush - or you can clean it before teardown with a water spray - search up on how I tell you to do that (you end up "steam-cleaning" the inside of the combustion chamber.) Use nothing harder than brass on the piston tops - but there will probably be carbon deposits there as well.

I've torn town the top end, cleaned the head, and replaced lifters in a full day's work - get started on it Friday night (remove the outside parts and disconnect the exhaust. Allow the engine to cool overnight before you remove the head or manifolds - but you can drain the coolant the night before. I tend to leave the oil in place and change it after reassembly - any yock that gets cleaned out or flushed down with carburettor cleaner before I put it all back together pools in the oil, and more of it goes out with it when drained than you'd get if you had a "dry" sump.) It is vital that the engine be at room temperature before the head screws are untorqued - or you'll have a very good chance of warping the cylinder head! Likewise the manifolds.

Again, do not use the Dremel to remove material for the port/polish job, unless you've got a supply of spare rotor assemblies with new bearings! The Dremel is not designed or built for that sort of work, and you're going to burn the bearings up if you try it (believe me! I've got two corded and a cordless Dremel that I use extensively, so I've got a pretty good idea what you can and can't get away with... An electric die grinder would be an improvement, since it's built for that sort of work. An air-powered die grinder would be ideal, since the electric has to rest and cool off every now and again...)

5-90
I'm sure you can guess, but I have used your info extensively in preparation for this project.
I have a die grinder to do the majority of the work, the dremel is for the smaller work, and more finite areas (like you said, used as a pencil)

Right now the Jeep is sitting outside, tomorrow I was going to pull it into the garage and start the tear down. I thought I would let it run a bit to get it warmed up (fireplace takes a bit to get the garage warm).
Figured everything would come apart better if its warm. hadn't thought of the coolant draining, or doing the oil after the job is done to clear out the garbage.

Have a few pages on the job bookmarked, will have this with me. This and my camera to take a bunch of pics during the break down... in hopes it goes back the same way.

rstarch345
yes I have the specs, FSM has everything I need, will be following that as needed. I don't have the spray, but I have the tube of Copper to add to the gaskets to keep it in place during assembly.

thanks guys.
oh just realized I need coolant and oil for after the job is done, and hadn't thought of the Belleville's either... one more trip to the store, hope they have the bolts.

beakie said:

5-90
I'm sure you can guess, but I have used your info extensively in preparation for this project.
I have a die grinder to do the majority of the work, the dremel is for the smaller work, and more finite areas (like you said, used as a pencil)

Right now the Jeep is sitting outside, tomorrow I was going to pull it into the garage and start the tear down. I thought I would let it run a bit to get it warmed up (fireplace takes a bit to get the garage warm).
Figured everything would come apart better if its warm. hadn't thought of the coolant draining, or doing the oil after the job is done to clear out the garbage.

Have a few pages on the job bookmarked, will have this with me. This and my camera to take a bunch of pics during the break down... in hopes it goes back the same way.

Click to expand...

Excellent. Yes, a Polaroid (or, now, a decent digital camera) is a necessary part of any toolkit - especially if you're working on transmissions! I've kept a Polaroid in my toolbox for about as long as I care to remember.

For heating up the garage; if you've a fireplace, start with a "log cabin" fire, as it will help to heat things up rather quickly (air gets through the thing easier.) Once you get things warmed up, you can just throw logs on "any old way" to keep going - but you'll get warm a lot faster with a proper firelay from the off...

Get a copy of The Boy Scout Handbook, if you can find one (thrift stores are a good bet.) You'll find a lot of useful little bits like that in there...

haha thanks, but I grew up splitting wood for heat. Never had anything but woodstove growing up, love wood heat, nothing better. half my time in the garage is spent stoking the fire and making sure I'm getting as much heat from it as possible.
just that my buddies garage is about 40'x26' with 16' ceilings and he didn't blow any insulation into the rafters, so heat escapes easily.
not to mention it has an old in-effecient stove, and its a straight pipe, straight up and out... I had to go buy a pipe valve to slow the escaping air down and let some heat circulate before it shoots out the chimney.

little off topic, back to things.

so my plan meets with approval I take it?

beakie said:

haha thanks, but I grew up splitting wood for heat. Never had anything but woodstove growing up, love wood heat, nothing better. half my time in the garage is spent stoking the fire and making sure I'm getting as much heat from it as possible.
just that my buddies garage is about 40'x26' with 16' ceilings and he didn't blow any insulation into the rafters, so heat escapes easily.
not to mention it has an old in-effecient stove, and its a straight pipe, straight up and out... I had to go buy a pipe valve to slow the escaping air down and let some heat circulate before it shoots out the chimney.

little off topic, back to things.

so my plan meets with approval I take it?

Click to expand...

Yeah - me too. And I can see the issue with the stove.

Your plan seems sound, so go ahead with it! I've no complaints that I can think of. If I had, you'd know what they were by now.

progress so far, pulled head,
plug 4 was a little darker than the others
cyl 5 had more carbon on the top of the cylinder than the others
no visible cracks on the head, gasket looked ok too, ohwell.
got all rough porting done to intake/exhuast on the head. tomorrow will polish the exhuast, take any edges off both.
noticed some welds in the exhuast manifold that could use some grinding too, so I did. Intake lost a little material aswell.

so here are some porting picss

dark circle around left port is my guideline, nicely left behind by exhuast gases. on the right is whats been done so far. tomorrow will polish as much as I can.

this pic shows the intake ports before porting


and this pic is after some porting.



I won't be polishing the intake port. research says the roughness aids in air/fuel atomization.

I will clean up any edges tomorrow too, but other than that I am happy with the amount of material taken off both ports.



For anyone who had worries of taking off a head, whether for a gasket replacement, or for any other reason. I was really worried whether I could or not, and here I am waist deep and I am not worried anymore. The tear down is not hard, I had a helping hand to get at the intake/exhuast bolts, but could have done it by myself if I had too.
The build up may be more work, but I am not concerned as much as I was when I realized my gasket had blown.

Hoping to have it back together Monday night, maybe Tuesday tho.

While leaving a "rough" surface would help with fuel suspension - it's almost a non-issue with us, since we have port fuel injection (the fuel is atomised by the injector, and it doesn't need to stay in suspension as long.) Still, it would take too long to get a "mirror" finish - and a very slight roughness would probably help laminar airflow and flow volume more than a "dead smooth" surface would.

Try to keep track of how much material you remove to shape the port - you'll want to "ramp in" three to five times that distance to blend the port entry (if you remove 1/16", you'll want to blend it in 3/16"-5/16")

Yep, have done that.

I found it easiest to start at the corners (intake ports), using a low angled cone die bit. I fed it in and out so that it took away as much material as I wanted too, close to the gasket lines. Did that in each corner, than move between corners to blend the entry. Worked out nicely.

I don't expect to get the exhuast 'mirror like' but I will be spending more time getting that polished than the intake port.

Question for clean up time.
I am unable to get the valves out, got a spring compressor, but didn't have anything to keep valves closed when pressing springs. So all of this has been done with valves in. I had wanted to pull everything and sand blast the outside so as to paint it, but don't want to with the valves in it still. I don't want to get any valve work done, but with all the shavings in there should I be taking it to someone who can pull the valves and get it cleaned properly or just power wash it and leave it at that. Painting isn't a big deal, as I would like to stroke a spare engine in the next year or so anyway.

Thanks for continued help.

On plus side, had a good fire going all day, probably lost about 50lbs of snow weight (from the Jeep), and was warm all day to boot.

new question to get this finally sorted out.

while everything was torn down, and put neatly in its place, I find I have broken both CCV valves on my valve cover. I have checked around and no one has them, but I could order them from dealership.
tonite I will check one more place to find something I can make work as I don't want to wait for dealership to get it in (1-2 days) I have the part numbers from MADXJ's site if need be.

Question is, will there be a big problem if I get it running without these in place tonite.
I can put most everything back together, and would like to move it out of the garage to start on the same job on an Alero... but want to make sure this is running instead of pushing it out of the way.

Any problems running without the 2x 90* elbows going to airbox and intake manifold?

thanks