Scirocco Register

thought i would post some pics i took of the headgaset i did on the rocko last year as i dont know how many other people would be interested in doing the task them selves. 1st i started by removing all the airbox and stuff you will also need to remove the wiring goin to the carb heater and the earth wire going from the rocer cover to the coil on the baulhead.

then i removed the rocker cover (8 nuts and be carefull not to snap the studs) and asotiated bits and peices ie top of timing chest cover. plus pulled the weber carb off, (4 bolts onto the flange and the throttle cable + choke cable, dont forget the vac pipes and fuel pipe) to get to the lower timing chest you will also need to remove the auxilery/alternator belt.

next was the water jacket pull the bottem pipe off the radiator and allow to drain. here you can see i have removed all the water pipes goin to the head and the inlet manifold. be carefull and take your time with this as the plastic flanges are very brittle, the sensor housing flange need to be wholly removed for access this is on the front of the head and has the top radiator hose going to it. remove the vac pipe from manifold to brake servo which also feed the dizzy. electrical items to be unplugged include the inlet manifold preheater cable, the oil pressure cable in the gearbox side of the head and all the ht leads. on the side of the head is a big long metal water pipe thisi bolted to the head where the waterflange comes out. this must be removed before trying to take the head off.

next i was lining up the timing belt ready for removal.the cam sprocket has a dot on the back of it that lines up with the top of the head. but also the lobes for no 1 cylinder are both pointing up as a point of reference. the crank sprocket has the auxilery pulley on it an a dot on this pulley lines up with a dot on the intermidiate shaft haowever i was going by the top dead center mark on the fly wheel which is visable through tha bell housing aperture. then i paint penned the position of the intermidiat shaft. simples!last thing to do before pulling the head off is to remove the exaust down pipe by unding the spring clamps which are a pig to get off unless like me you fork out the £20 for the special tool, its well worth the money for the hassle it saves

many people find fiddling with timing belts daunting but as long as you dont turn any pulleys with the belt off and you put the belt on so that the timing marks ALL line up still there shouldnt be a problem. right now i hve removed the belt and have undone all the head bolts progressively (ie quarter of a turn on all of them, then a quater of a turn again, this helps to minimise any warping of the head if not allready warped from the headgasket going, usually the only warping takes place when the head gets to hot but it wont hurt to be care full.)
as you can see in the pic i had a problem with water leaking into cylinder one, which caused alsort of weird faults but to be honest didnt show any real symptoms of head gasket. you can see how wet the piston crown is and the colour of it.

after cleaning the worst of the gasket of the head and block i set about stripping the head.i had removed the cam just before taking this photo but its worth noting there is a sequence to undoing the securing nuts that hold the caps down. you remove caps 1+3 first then gradualy remove 2 and 5 i think, obviously consult the haynes manual first! i numbered all the tappets before removing them so as not to forget which bore they came from. the cam securing caps are numbered so they are easy to remember and yes number four cap wasnt fitted to this year model for some reason?

once ide removed the tappets i next set about removing the manifolds. you must invest in a load of new manifold nuts and maybe some studs because when you see the state of the old ones you wont be putting them back on the engine.

got the inlet manifold off, now you can see the state off the exhaust manifold nuts, to get thes nuts off i left them to soak in wd40 and left it for an hour or so then gently try and undo these nuts takin my time as i didnt want to snap the studs, they will come off it just takes a lot of patience

when i turned the head over you can relly see the colour difference in the valves i couldnt beliece it hadnt done any more damage

now its time to clean all the head sufaces, using a scaper and some gasket remover( brake cleaner works well) as well as neat petrol. anyone touching the fireface must be carefull not to scratch it or mark it in any way.

now i removed all the valves springs collets and spring seats. valve spring compressor will be needed to do this but also needs to be the deep reach type to reach into the head

as you can see the compnents i labled and stored them in the order they were removed, with all the valves removed i went to work with the scraper and cleaning fluids to remove as much crap as possible from the surfaces, again being carefull not to damage any of the fireface

next were the valve stem oil seals only accesable with all the valve gear removed. to get these out is best done with some very long needle nose pliers with a 90 degree bend at the end, use these from the top of the head leavering from the side and they will pop out with a wiggle( not down the bore the tappets came from you wont get them out that way and you risk scoring the surface finish in the bore. as you can see the stem seals are tiny any underneath these is the lower valve spring seat. this can be romoved after the valve stem oil seal has been removed but MUST be the first thing to go back in BEFORE you put your nice new stem seal in. other wise if you put the stem seal in first you will haveto remove it to get the spring seat back in place, thus damaging it.

herte is a piccy of the valve gear removed for one valve. i just left these to soak in petrol to give em a good clean

next i set about grinding in the valves as the seats were prety horrible. as you can see.