Guys,
You know that feeling when you're working on a project and suddenly you realize you screwed up? Bad. Your heart sinks. You don't know if you should be sad, upset, angry or disappointed in yourself. Well, that was me today.
Enter my latest flip. A 2006 Jetta TDI whose cam ate itself. Super common and well documented on these engines. It was still running and driving when I bought it. Should be a pretty simple job. About a days's worth of work start-finish including the water pump etc. Until you make that one mistake... I started loosening the camshaft retainer bolts by just breaking them all free, one cap at a time. Then did another 90 degrees on each bolt, followed by full rotations until all the bolts were completely loose. None of the caps moved so I went ahead and tapped one of them with a mallet but still nother. Weird. So I went ahead and started pulling the retainer bolts out completely. This is what came out...
My first thought was "Wait a minute, this doesn't match any of the bolts I got in the mail. They must've shipped me the wrong bolts."
Followed by "That's a pretty massive bolt for a cam retainer, no?"
Then my heart sank... NOOOOOOO!
You guessed it, I meticulously loosed and removed all the cylinder head bolts. This picture shows the location of the cylinder head bolts in relation to the much smaller cam bolts to the inside.
I did manage to get it all removed after banging my head against the wall for a bit.
And finally, some of the carnage
I would stick that bolt back in and retorque it if it isn't a stretch bolt. If it was I'd stick the old bolt in and torque it until a new bolt showed up.
84FSP
UberDork
4/26/22 3:49 p.m.
Argh - not sure that will buff out. Sorry man.
Toyman! said:
I would stick that bolt back in and retorque it if it isn't a stretch bolt. If it was I'd stick the old bolt in and torque it until a new bolt showed up.
If it were just 1 bolt, maybe. But he loosened all of the head bolts. That's new head gasket time in my book. I'd never trust it to stay sealed after being loosened up like that.
Yup, sadly this is the current state.
Think of how much better you'll sleep knowing it has a fresh head gasket now. (trying to put a positive spin on it...)
Opti said:
Toyman! said:
I would stick that bolt back in and retorque it if it isn't a stretch bolt. If it was I'd stick the old bolt in and torque it.
FTFY
+2. i'd retorque all to factory spec and send it.
The bolts are reuseable, but they are a lot harder to angle to spec the second time because the fancy coating will be gone.
I'd put the head bolts back in and ship it. If you did not lift the head off the deck, it will be fine.
j_tso
HalfDork
4/26/22 6:23 p.m.
Cousin_Eddie (Forum Supporter) said:
Think of how much better you'll sleep knowing it has a fresh head gasket now. (trying to put a positive spin on it...)
That and raise your asking price, give the impression you're the kind of person who replaces head gaskets just because they're 15 years old.
Well, this is where I ended up after today. I wish I would've read the "send it" comments before starting to disassemble the head. Since it's an MLS gasket I think it might have been fine. Oh well, it'll be new now.
Also, whoever decided to put both the intake and exhaust manifolds in the tiny space between the engine and firewall should be shot
I got cocky once with a head gasket job on a 3800SC in a Bonneville. Popped the socket on my 1/2" impact to pull the head bolts. First one didn't budge. I hit several of them and finally one came loose... except I had the impact set to clockwise and I broke the head bolt off down in the block. The ones that didn't break I had way over torqued and couldn't trust.
Once I finally got the heads off it took me an hour to get the broken bolt out of the block only to realize that the deck was cracked.... which meant that I likely tweaked the head as well.
LKQ to the rescue. $300 low-mileage longblock.
