Head Gasket Part Three

On Monday, December 1st, I started working on getting the timing cover off so I could get the broken chain guide out. It was actually pretty easy. I followed the Bentley manual pretty much, except for one part. It said that you had to drop the oil pan to be able to get the timing cover off. I removed the four bolts that go from the oil pan into the bottom of the timing cover and it came off without the oil pan dropping.

I thought that while I was down there that I would just drop the oil pan and replace the gasket since there is possibly a small leak coming from the pan gasket. After reading through the Bentley manual, it didn't seem to be a major job, WRONG! After about an hour, I only had about two thirds of the bolts removed. The other ones were nearly impossible to get to, at least with my limited tool cache. Looking at the pan, there was no way that it would come out like explained in the Bentley. I got on the internet and found that it isn't quite as simple as Bentley made it sound. It looks like you either have to lift the entire motor, or remove much of the front suspension and tie rods, etc to get the pan out. I decided to put that job on hold and put all of the bolts back in except for the ones that came out of the timing cover.

In removing the timing cover, you also have to remove the crankshaft bolt which holds on the vibration damper and the main belt pulley. That thing is torqued to 300 ft. lbs. Bentley says you need a special tool for holding the pulley still while you remove the bolt. I didn't have that tool, so I thought that the TDC pin that is locked into the flywheel I installed would probably keep the motor from turning and it worked great. I was even able to get the pin out and it didn't look any worse for the wear.

Once the timing cover was off, I removed the broken chain guide, along with the timing chain tensioning guide and the timing chain itself. In the picture below, you can see the broken guide and the larger tensioning guide.









I ordered both new guides along with a bunch of other stuff I've noticed that was pretty worn out as I tore everything apart.

The picture below is the timing chain area where it attaches to the crank shaft with everything removed.









Once I had figured the oil pan gasket was a no go, at least for now, I decided to clean up the head mating surface on the block and clean up the tops of the pistons. I used a small wire brush on my dremel tool and a bit of fine sandpaper to remove a bunch of build up on the block (don't worry, I made sure none of the debris fell into the cylinders). I used some Berryman's Carburetor cleaner to clean the carbon deposits on the tops of the pistons. It worked very well with just a rag and the cleaner, see for yourself...(compare it to the pictures from part two of this series)