Dear forum members,

 

I've searched the forum numerous times about the known MPI headgasket failure, but I'm still not sure about the right -final- (and revised?) torque for these head bolts. I just want to check if they are still tight enough after a mechanic replaced the HG some time ago. The engine still leaks a tiny amount of oil into the cooling system.

 

If the mechanic had a bad night, I assume they easily mess up the bolt lengths, rings and the thirty 90 degree turns in a specific order described here:

 

http://workshop-manuals.com/skoda/fabia-mk1/drive_unit/1.0/37;_1.4/44;_1.4/50_kw_mpi_engine/engine_cylinder_head_valve_gear/removing_and_installing_cylinder_head/removing_and_installing_cylinder_head/install/.

Edited 8 December, 20178 yr by Palatinux

Tightening the bolts will not help if the HG is leaking oil into the water jacket, the gasket will be damaged by the leak and will need changing again.

Even by a small leak from the oil > coolant channel ? I had the same before the HG was replaced last time 3 years ago. Are the HG made from paper?

 

 

 

Edited 8 December, 20178 yr by Palatinux

I suggest you remove - one at a time - and check length and torque of bolts 7 & 8. Also check for correct presence/absence of washers, 7 should have one, 8 shouldn't, as per your link.

How did you compute thirty 90-degree turns, I'm only seeing twenty?

Edited 8 December, 20178 yr by Wino

My car:

 

 

 

--- Other Fabia MPI; Credits to L.C. Nøttaasen --

 

 

Edited 10 December, 20178 yr by Palatinux

Thank you Wino,

 

The washers are in place. I'm afraid to loosen the bolts because I think the HG or bolts may damage. Since there is sealant on the bolts of the alternator, I assume the mechanic has followed the manual and the bolts are in the right spot too. What's left is that he used an incorrect HG or an incorrect headbol/nut torque (and/or not cleaned the bolt holes and oil the bolt threads). The head was skimmed, checked and cleaned by a special shop for 50 euro excl vat.

 

Since the leaking water/oil channels are on the front side of the engine (see second photo), I suspect that bolts/nuts from 11 to 14 (alternator bracket, sparkplug unit bracket and the last one on the right) will get looser over time (must be 20nm).

 

The other suspects are bolts 1,4,5,9 and 8. Since the manual is talking about turning the bolts in 90 degrees stages w/o an final torque moment, one should assume these are stretch bolts and not (reusable) solid ones. Despite that other people on this forum claim that you can reuse the (solid) bolts.

 

Since the normal behavior of dealerships and mechanics in my area is charging 900 euro for a HG change (for 2/3 hours work?) or not doing their job correctly, I need a lot of theoretical ammo to protect myself from being tricked again. And I guess I'm not the only one having this problem.

 

Checking the torque on all 14 bolts must be possible before wasting your time on a HG change.

 

Edited 10 December, 20178 yr by Palatinux

A  technical bulletin from a engine rebuild company about head bolts. 

SB004.pdf

 

If I'm correct, you could only tight headbolts a bit more (assuming the threads/holes are still clean and oiled) to reach the ideal clamping force before they break. Unbolting them and/or reusing them is a risk. The ideal situation will be cleaning the mounting holes, use a threadrunner, clean them again, oil the threads and washers of the new bolts and follow the manual from there.

 

Please correct me if I'm wrong somewhere. I'm an engineer, not an experienced mechanic.

Edited 10 December, 20178 yr by Palatinux

The thing is, the official Skoda instructions don't mention replacing the bolts, and they are usually super-cautious on this. The torque levels are lower than many more recent engines too, which leads me to think those bolts are not torqued into their plastic region.

 

I guided you to bolts 7 & 8 because I believe they are either side of the high pressure oil feed to the head (inside yellow marking in this image borrowed from a thread on here).  I suspect the high pressure feed because the low pressure (gravity) oil returns are unlikely to be able to push oil into pressurised coolant.

 

Does the headgasket that your garage fitted have TEMAC written in the corner like this one?

 

 

Edited 10 December, 20178 yr by Wino

Good to know we are on the same level. The manual I have is from 'Vraagbaak' / ISBN 90-215-3815-6, and it says that the bolts need to replaced. Confusing. I think it depends on the amount of stress the bolts have to withstand or the phase they are in now, like you say. German brand = over-engineering. Since this happened so often to this 8v block, you would assume they have changed the torque specs by now, only known by the dealers?.

 

Is that the only high pressure oil hole on the block? I searched, but I never found that info

 

I forgot to ask. Do you know if the HG full metal, or only metal around the pistonrings + paper on the rest? And are the rings below the pistonrings from copper or PTFE?

 

 

Edited 10 December, 20178 yr by Palatinux

Same as Wino asked - does your head gasket have the marking TEMAC on the front right corner?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 10 December, 20178 yr by TMB

The mechanic told me that he used the original TEMAC HG, like I ordered, but he used an aftermarket one. Couldn't tell at that time.

Edited 10 December, 20178 yr by Palatinux

Oh dear.

30 minutes ago, Palatinux said:

Good to know we are on the same level. The manual I have is from 'Vraagbaak' / ISBN 90-215-3815-6, and it says that the bolts need to replaced. Confusing. I think it depends on the amount of stress the bolts have to withstand or the phase they are in now, like you say. German brand = over-engineering. Since this happened so often to this 8v block, you would assume they have changed the torque specs by now, only known by the dealers?.

 

The official info I found was for AMD code 1.4 as used in Octavia, but it all looks identical mechanically. Those instructions are the same as in your link to workshop-mauals.com, no mention of new bolts that I could see. If you want to read the official Skoda instructions, you can download them via erWin Skoda. I can guide you through the process if you have any trouble locating the desired info. It'll cost you 7 or 8 Euros + tax. (That gives an hour access, during which you can download huge amounts of other information to get better value for money.

 

Quote

 

Is that the only high pressure oil hole on the block? I searched, but I never found that info

 

I believe so. You can see an extra rubber(?) seal around that hole in the gasket that isn't present on any others.

 

Quote

 

I forgot to ask. Do you know if the HG full metal, or only metal around the pistonrings + paper on the rest? And are the rings below the pistonrings from copper or PTFE?

 

 

I believe they are all fibre gaskets not metal. Only the fire rings around the cylinders are metal.  I think the seals at the bottom of the liners are copper.

Edited 10 December, 20178 yr by Wino

And I also asked 3 dealers, One says it should have a red TEMAC stamp, the other one said it has a red Skoda logo stamp, and the other told me you cannot see it (no stamp) and that the cause was a dropped cylinderbus. That was the day I became paranoid

Edited 10 December, 20178 yr by Palatinux

6 minutes ago, Palatinux said:

And I also asked 3 dealers, One says it should have a red TEMAC stamp, the other one said it has a red Skoda logo stamp, and the other told me you cannot see it (no stamp) and that the cause was a dropped cylinderbus.

 

If you look at the gasket photo above, it has a Skoda logo in the opposite corner to the TEMAC lettering, but that will be invisible when installed.

Edited 10 December, 20178 yr by Wino

Thanks. I'll contact the guy again who replaced the HG one more time to solve it in his own time and money. My wifes car was also serviced by him, and is now nearly EOL since last week thanks to that guy.

 

I'll be back later, blood pressure is rising so high, that my own head(gasket) is about to blow. Time for some snowplowing  with my terrier.

Edited 10 December, 20178 yr by Palatinux

39 minutes ago, Palatinux said:

Time for some snowplowing  with my terrier

Just been doing the same.

 

And I assume your Border liked it just as my Norfolk. To dig or not to dig, that's the question

 

I'll look into Erwin another time, I need to write an all-you-can-eat program that can crawl and clone their whole server within a hour.

 

The material of my current HG looks the same as the Temac one. But it's just a OEM stamp, it could be a HG from the same (OEM) manufacturer. If that's the only HP oil-hole, I assume it seeps oil into the square cooling hole above it. But then it should also leak on the right (out)side of the engine-block when the engine is cold.

 

For now, bedtime.

 

ps. The last time I replaced a HG (Dad's Opel Omega A1) it sounded like the intro of the band Heavenly - Virus. No time to bang my head in the same rhythm until the engine seized. The reason why I'm afraid to fiddle with HG/engines.

 

 

Temac is a gasket manufacturer. If it hasn't got Temac on the gasket it's not one of theirs.

 

http://www.temac.cz/default.aspx

Going back to basics, and unless any one of the learned folks on here can suggest better- IS the HG warped. I'd be asking WHY the HG failed in the first place.

Palatinux/Wino- our breed call it snow snorkelling. Head down, with the muzzle on ground and bum in the air. The problem in the car is that both muzzle and tum are coated in icicles, which melt and wet the seats.  The last lad loved to do it. Present little lady doesn't -  possibly as she shorter and likes to keep bits warm.

OP was charged 50 Euro for a head skim so we have to assume that the work was done and that the head isn't warped.

Yes, the head was skimmed and cleaned by a specialist. I don't think the mechanic  that replaced the HG is a fraud, but I do think he was stubborn enough to use a non-OEM HG against our agreement and/or that he did not oil/tighten the new bolts and clean their mounting holes properly. He was at least experienced enough to not pull out the liners while replacing the HG. (No massive cooling fluid leaks). "Whoops, and a liner came loose all by itself. That will cost you 700 more". I've heard that too much on skodaforum.nl.

 

I was too ignorant and good of trust after he replaced the HG and the oil was still sweating into the coolant. I'll see if my legal counsel can help me after this time (got proof). On the other hand I was afraid to let him do another HG replacement under warranty (mechanic revenge damage is quite common in this urban area).

 

It's at least clear now (confirmed by a dealer and VAG specialist) that we cannot reuse or tighten these cilinderheadbolts if they must be tightened with a certain amount of degrees (which means stretchbolts). Then you'll (eventually) risk snapping the bolts or tear your HG apart.

 

I'll be visiting a more trustworthy address next monday to see if the waterpump, pully or timing chain is making this grinding noise and what another previous mechanic has destroyed on the front suspension.

 

This youngtimer is heavily tax deductible in the Netherlands (63% to 80% on everything this car costs), but if you drive a 16 year old Skoda here, it feels like you are served in a similar way.

 

Replacing a bad budget battery for a new Varta C22 battery tomorrow to see if it solves another strange phenomenon post in another thread.  Battery was 12.12v two days ago, but it passes all types of battery testers. Parasitic draw was only 12ma in car deep sleep mode and the alternator was bench tested ok twice.

 

 

 

 

 

6 hours ago, Palatinux said:

It's at least clear now (confirmed by a dealer and VAG specialist) that we cannot reuse or tighten these cilinderheadbolts if they must be tightened with a certain amount of degrees (which means stretchbolts

I disagree. Why don't the official instructions mention replacement???

If bolts are to be tensioned into their plastic region, then torque + angle tightening is required.

But that is just a much more accurate (than torque alone) method of achieving a desired pre-load, which can be used on any fastener, even if it's only used within its elastic range. 

You are right if you take everything into account. I think most dealers prefer to make a big buck replacing the HG instead of checking the tightness of the head bolts. This would only work if the HG is not yet destroyed, but you can always try.

 

Question stays, how can we check or calculate the final torque on the bolts without removing them first? This can possible save many owners from an unnecessary HG replacement.