URGENT: 10v head (NF) broken! What to do?

[Brendan Walsh]

Building an NF motor, 2.3L 10v.   Head was rebuilt by a
not-as-competant-as-I'd-like machinist but it was just a valve guides/stem
seals/one angle valve job.  The cam has .020" runout.  New aftermarket
lifters (from Rob at TPC). .005" milled as well.

The problem: when torquing the cam caps down, the rear-most cam cap broke in
half with a nice little *pop* and at the same time one stud broke the cam
tower with 3 radial cracks. The cam was being torqued evenly across the head
when it cracked, and it was still about 1/8" from being tight.  I've heard
of cam caps cracking when they are finally torqued, but never so far from
the head before.
Snip!

Hi richard, sorry to hear about your head, i had the same experience with my 
NG build. I think it may just be a bad casting, we assemble our motors 
differently than they do at the factory so despite extreme caution there 
will still be uneven load on the caps. When mine broke I just bought a new 
one and rebuilt that, but was going to have the other repaired. When my 
welder attempted to do so the casting basically crumbled in that area. My 
guy is pretty compitant so  don't think it's his fault, more to do with the 
casting technique. As the microscopic air pockets heat up it forces the 
material out rather than into the crack(not the first cast piece he's done 
for me, so i believe him)
A new head will cost you roughly $-100-150 from a scrapyard or friendly audi 
enthusiast, you'll be able to reuse all the internals so you may be able to 
get away cheaper if you can put it all back together yourself. Good luck and 
best regards!

Brendan