[urq] Cylinder head retorque

[Louis-Alain Richard]

Hi everyone,

 

A little wrap-up from two years ago. I exploded the engine (stock) in my 250
000 km urQuattro in January 2008. I replaced it with a lightly rebuilt stock
WX (block and piston's grooves cleaned, new rings and bearings, head checked
and cleaned, new gaskets) in June 2008. The car saw only a few ice racing
sessions after that, gentle ice lapping would be a better description, and
maybe 5000 km of street duty. In January 2010, I had to replace the heater
core, which I did. After that, I noticed there was some "bubbling" noises
coming from the heater core. I thought it was air trapped in there, and it
would go away after a few km. I ice-lapped the car 2 more times in 2010, and
used very little afterwards. I did notice however that the car smoked on
start-up, thick white smoke that disappeared after a while. 

 

Recently, like last month, the smoke was permanent. Time for a head gasket
replacement, or maybe even a head replacement since these WX are prone to
cracks between the valves. 

 

Today, we removed the cam cover, just to discover that every single head
bolt was under torqued. As an example, I adjusted my (new) torque wrench to
45 ft-lb, and was able to add 30 to 60 degrees to each bolt to reach that
setting after I "cracked" loose the stiction.  The specs are 29 ft-lbs, then
45, then add 180 degrees. We followed that sequence in 2008, with new head
bolts and a good Snap-on clicker torque wrench.  

 

Now, tell me, what went wrong ? 

We used a (made in Germany) Elring gasket set, a lot of new stuff, we took
our time, didn't drink too many beers, it was nice outside, the moon was in
Capricorn, etc. 

 

Louis-Alain

1983 urQuattro