Well... i fhad an overheat a while back on my 740td and the head had to be straightens and milled to clean up. well the clown at the machine shop was supposed to mill it, but when I picked it up, it had horribly deep grooves in it and the head guy wasn't there. I bring it back a week later and the guy tells me that his underling put it on a belt sander instead of milling, because he's woried about breaking the bit on his mill on the prechambers on the head. The guy then attempts to polish out the grooves. Still looks bad but at this point i'm stick. the head is at minimum thickness.
I mount it up and break the engine in and it's sounding funny, I run a compression check and it's got two dead cylinders.
I pull the head and it is obvious thet where the deep grooves are on #1 and #4 the head gasket didn't seal, open spot in the ring mark around the hole follow the grooves straight to oil drain passeges.
Diesel heads require a mirror smooth finish because of the factory multi layer steel head gasket( essentially just a few layers of steel shims, no give in them to compensate for a bad head ) as does any head using a multi layer steel gasket.

So I'm out about $140 for what I paid the machine shop, about $200 for a head gasket, $50 for head bolts as it stands now, plus now i'm going to have to buy a new head casting out of europe for about $500+ shipping plus all the labour time i'm eating over this fiasco.

My question is, what is the liability of the machine shop at this point? Am I only going to be able to get what I paid them and have to eat the rest.?

What really gets me is this know it all didn't want to read the factory manuals that i brought with me for him to borrow, he said he didn't need them. he clown didn't reference anything, he just did what he does for whatever 'mercan junk comes through the door...and this is supposed to be the best machine shop in the state.
If the bonehead had told me that he wasn't equipped to do the job, I would have sent it out of state to get done properly.

-----------Robert
--
-------Robert, '93 940t, '90 240 wagon, '84 240 diesel (she's sick) , '80 245 diesel, '86 740 GLE turbo diesel, '92 Ford F350 diesel dually