Scirocco Register

I'm going to (finally) sort the head gasket on the GT this weekend. When I replace the head, do I need to use new cylinder head bolts, or can i reuse the old ones?
Anything else i should be checking is in stock with gsf before the weekend?

8v? I tend to re-use mine.

Yeah 8v, sorry should have said. OK, that saves a tenner at least!

I thought they were stretch bolts so need to be renewed when the head was taken off.

Yeah me too, esp if they are the original 20 odd year old ones. I'd change them for brand new ones Ben personally.

Apart from that, is it time to do the timing belt and tensioner? Makes sense while you at it bud

Alex

OK, new bolts it is. Cambelt and tensioner already purchased and ready to rock!

I know people who reuse head bolts on some pretty high performance engines (one of them a 300+ bhp 16v turbo). Officially they're single use, but you can get away with it.

Don't buy head bolts from GSF - they're made from soft cheese.

vwspares.co.uk sell decent ones, or there's always VAG.

They aren't stretch bolts, but never a bad idea to replace the originals.

Clarifying that, 8v bolts aren't stretch, as far as I can tell. The ones I just took off the car are 10.8s, which is not a stretchy material.

16v head bolts ARE stretch bolts though, just to avoid anyone assuming 16v ones are the same.

OK, so I'm still in the middle of doing this, but I've been taking loads of photos, so I'll post something when the damn things running again in a week or two! 14 hour days at work and getting dark early is not a good recipe for fast car repairs! So far I've cleaned up and refurbed the head that i got from Risocco (cheers alex ) and detached everything holding my head on the car (apart from the bar steward manifold clamps). The thread inside my exhaust clamp tool stripped itself spectacularly, so I had to drill and tap the inside and make up a new bolt/threaded bar thingy that goes down the centre. Hopefully will work now but I won't know until the weekend when i give it a try. The good news is that the new head is pretty straight. I stuck it on the CMM at work ( i love my job) and the surface variation is 0.059mm across the whole surface, and Haynes says 0.1mm is allowable so should be fine. I was worried i was going to have to get a fly cutter on the milling machine and skim the bugger! Depending on how well the car runs with the new head on, I may think about doing some work on the old head just for the experience. Anyway, sorry for the ramble, pics and even more waffle to follow