[urq] UrQ's Head gasket progress

[JagerBond at aol.com]

Making some good progress on the 81 UrQ towards getting the head off.   
Intake is now off, and once I get some deep metric sockets the exhaust will soon 
follow.   Being a Colorado car everything seems to come off a little bit harder, 
but then again I've got cold beer, a big hammer and sawzall.   

What I noticed -- none of the timing marks lined up!   Not the distributor 
rotor and corresponding mark, not cam wheel dimple and valve cover gasket and 
not the "O" on the flywheel.   I couldn't get 2 of the 3 to line up???   OK the 
10 million dollar question, which way does the motor spin?   Standing at the 
front and looking at the engine it would appear that the engine spins 
clockwise.   If thats the case it would be my guess that the ignition is detonating 
before TDC as the dimple in the cam is one notch counter-clockwise from its mark 
when the distributor rotor is lined up with its mark...   Even so the flywheel 
mark is no where to be seen.   FWIW it also appears that someone put a white 
mark on the flywheel where the "O" is???   I checked through the old paper 
work and sure enough the timing belt and water pump where changed 7k ago.   

- Could this be a reason for the headgasket failure?
- Is this the reason this car never seemed to have power?

Anyways I'm having a great time with tools.

Mike Bond
2002 A4 1.8T
2 UrQ's getting the love
4KCS not getting the love
2001 GMC Yukon 30k with a piston slap.