The head

I'm spending some time cleaning up my cylinder head now that it's off. No big things, cleaning, changing valve stem seals. The valve seats looked like the moon, so I also decided to lap them.

While dismantling the engine, I had to pull the head. I didn't plan doing much on it, since previous owner did a head job on the car, but well.

The intake manifold was already off, I left the exhaust ones on, just undid the manifold to downpipe bolts. I removed the rest of the small and moving parts: cam bearings, cams, tappets, spark plugs and head bolts.

A small surprise I found: there is a left threaded bolt holding a pulley sprocket for the cam chain. That was replaced by a stud with a nut. I couldn't undo this, so just pulled the sprocket and left the bearing on. This will give me a small surprise later.

I prepared a big plastic trashbin upside down, in front of the car. Then literally just pulled up the head by hand while standing half-leg in the engine bay. I've put it on the trashbin while I got my leg back :)

I found no obvious leak marks on the gasket. However, cyl #4 had way more carbon deposit than the rest. The rings later have shown no abnormality. Valve seats are also worse there, but that might be caused by the build-up. Though not sure about the reason, I think this was the cause of 5-cylindering sometimes when started.

I ordered a valve compressor some time back since it came at a very nice price. Being cheap, I was not surprised when it just bent, without releasing the valve a bit. Look, now it won't fit the box.

So I got two cam bearings from the spare head, used the tappet from the compressor set, and some bars to push in the valves. Then, I had to gently knock them back up, but to to this I had to turn the head on the side, then back, then again... once for every valve. 

Here's a closeup of what's going on:

Valves out, I cleaned the passages. I used the same metal sponges I used for the intake manifold. They worked like a charm on the carbon deposits, even in the exhaust!

Valves out, I've just put them in a drill and used a cutter blade to remove the deposits. DO NOT do this, I scratched two valve laps when the blade jumped. It's ok as I can replace them when..

I replace the cyl#4 ones. They really look like the surface of the moon. Swapping valves, cyl#6 exhaust valves are different, so I will swap those too (and later regret this).

(to be continued...)