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Ok, so I bit the bullet and decided to get the head from that 240 from 1990 that had only 97k km's on it. Described here.
Anyway, the reason for getting the head is that I've decided to expand my project and go ahead with putting on a rebuilt head. Might as well be this one, from a low mileage wrecked car.
I've never undertaken a head rebuild before, on any car. But I have taken several apart in the past, and am familiar with how it all works. Being a mechanical engineer helps a bit too. But I don't have access to factory Greenbooks and am basically doing this all with knowledge gathered from the internet, with this board being the main source.
My philosophy with car repair like this has always been to keep a known working part, while replacing it with a new/rebuilt one. So at this point, I still haven't taken the head off my car. Here's a picture:
I'm still a bit reluctant to undo those bolts. I'm aware of the risks of broken head bolts, etc. So I want to work on the new head, and then just swap them when it's all ready to go on.
I should also outline my goals with this project. It is basically to get 5 good years, or about 100000 km's out of it, and reliability is the key. So I think that by replacing the head gasket, and at the same time renewing the head and clearing the crud off the tops of the valves is worthwhile if I can do it economically. I'm not interested in a $1000 machine shop bill, and I do have the resources to do certain low-level tasks myself. I work at a non-destructive testing company and can have it dye-checked for free, for example. Here's the "new" head:
I've read all the old posts I could find on rebuilding heads (surprisingly few of those) and the relevant FAQ sections already. I don't have a good enough straightedge to be able to check flatness myself, as a starting point.
So by starting this topic, I thought if anyone has any ideas on what I should do to get started, in terms of evaluating the goodness of htis head for service, or to just scrap it, I would appreciate those. Then, using your suggestions, I'll get started and prepare the head for installation (or scrapping), and get this over with. At first I just wanted to describe this new head, but this post sort of turned into a description of my whole project and philosophy with this project - sorry about that. But hopefully we can put together a definitive head-rebuilding faq with all the comments people may add. I know about things like cleanign up the valves with a wire-wheel on a bench grinder, but there must be more details...
I'm eager to go get a valve spring compressor and start taking apart those valves. Can i go ahead with that? Through contacts at work, I may be able to get it cleaned for free, and then liquid-penetrant dye checked before starting machine work. And I'm putting together a list of questions to add to this topic - I'll add that tomorrow (it's late now, but I wanted to get this discussion started).
Thanks in advance.
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1991 740 automatic, sedan, B230F Burgundy/Tan Leather
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