>This morning I read the adventures of an Australian SOLer at the
>races. It took them not even a day (rather hours?) to pull the head,
>change the valve v and (not quite machine it but) work on the valve
>seat and get it going again - if I remember correctly. I was quite
>impressed.
Hey that's me!
Actually pulling the head off is very easy. There are only a few
things to watch out for. We did the whole job (incl. reaming the
guide and lapping in a new valve) in maybe 2 hrs.
1) make sure you clean off the gasket cement *very very well*. First
use a scraper (a flat tool about 1.5 inches wide is good), then use
AVGAS to finally clean it. I don't know why, but AVGAS is a miracle
cleaner - much much better than petrol. It evaportates dry within a
few seconds. I also use it to remove sticky adhesive glue.
2) Never, Never re-use a head gasket. Don't be tempted.
3) Don't mixup the pushrods. punch 8 (4 cyl) small holes in a piece of
cardboard, label one end #1 (or front whichever you please), and
insert the pushrods in order from the front.
4) use an air hose or at worst WD40 to clean everything out before
re-assembly. At the track, I use air from a spare tyre (inflated to
60psi) with a suitable piece of hose attached as a portable air
compressor!
I also tend to squirt WD40 down the guides before re-asembly also, but
then I only have 1.5 thou clearences.
5) use the tighten up sequence as directed by your manual.
6) use a torque wrench with the correct settings
7) set the tappets
8) after a short heat cycle, re-torque the head and re-set the
tappets. The correct way to do this is, following the tightening order,
loosen and re-torque ***1 bolt at a time***.
Hope I haven't left anything important out. Best to check your manual
to make sure!!!!
Mike
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