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1.9 TDI AHF piston valve clearance after skimming head

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Story: Leaking oil cooler causes coolant loss, car overheats on ascent. Oil cooler fixed but engine is still loosing coolant. Wet around overflow valve constantly and black spots in the reservoir. Head is dismantled, new gasket is ordered. Old head gasket looked terrible, the sealing coating when stuck and torn everywhere.

Now: New gasket is the thickest, 1,71 mm, three holes. I thought the original gasket was one hole (misread it for being one of three holes elongated meaning thinnest). So from what I remember now, the original gasket is two holes. There were some other holes on the right also spaced from the left group of holes, but from what I have understood, the first holes after the last elongated hole on the left is the number of holes that describes the gasket thickness. Alright, I will measure piston protrusion. But it's probably between 1 and 1.1 mm. My gasket can do 1.2 mm and head is skimmed 0,15mm. This is combination with the thickest gasket will be enough for piston protrusion of 1.05 mm.

Skimming head when there is no combustion chamber will very little affect the compression ratio, so the only thing to worry about really is valve to piston clearance. I can still see a little step down from head surface to the valve seat, like before the skimming. When the valves are seated they protrude a little above the head surface.

So to sum up, being unlucky the combination of head gasket thickness and skimming of the head, I can be left with 0,05 mm to little clearance according to safe spec set by VAG when combining head gasket and piston protrusion. One fix would be to take some material off the piston pockets of the pistons.

Any thoughts?

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