Head Off - Any top tips?

[s3swiss]

Whipped the offside head off today to get at pesky seized exhaust manifold bolts. Will get local engineers to drill out and re-tap for new bolts, but in the meantime - any good tips on re-assembly/parts? Got the 2.9 Granny manual so will use that for torques etc. Will also check new gaskets against old ones before fitting - other than that, any particular problems anyone has encountered doing this job? Cheers.

[intrepid]

The best tip I got refitting my S1 heads was to use heat resistant silicon instead of the cork 'S' shaped gasket that sit under the inlet manifold. Apparently they can stop the inlet manifold sitting properly and can cause leakage - the tip came from a Ford engine tuner.

It has worked for me, but don't forget to let the silicon set for 24 hours before use!!!

[Mr Plow]

You'll need to use new head bolts for the 2.9 as they are stretch bolts.

[s3swiss]

cheers all - interestingly enough (if you're into this stuff and I'm guessing you are as you're reading this!) - despite having covered 97,000 odd miles, the combustion chambers are in top nick. I'd tuned her up recently with a Gunsons CO2 meter and later had her checked at a dealers who reckoned the emissions were less than needed to pass the modern cat test! Guess I'll stick to Optimax, despite the cost. Some of the water channels looked like they had become restricted by deposits, particularly where the head gasket only had a small hole to allow flow. Think I'll replace water pump and flush the system again before finishing the job. By the way, if you're attempting this yourself, take time to clean the Torx bolts before attemting to undo them - had a heart-stopping moment when it looked like the last one would round-off (on internal edges) due to rust weakening the narrow parts. Looking forward to putting it all back together soon...