head question
11-28-2005, 12:24 PM
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head question Hmmm...it doesn't seem like my first thread went through, but if this is a double post I am sorry and if one of the mods could delete the first one I would appreciate it.
I was curious if anyone here could answer a quick question for me. I purchased a 2001 Trans Am back in June. After having the car for two days it overheated. I took it into a GM dealer and they told me the head gasket had blown. The dealership I bought it from took care of it on their dime, but now about 5 months later I blew another head gasket. I decided to take care of it myself this time and started the process of removing the heads. I took them to a machine shop where they resurfaced them and checked them for cracks.
Well everything worked out fine except when I went to torque down the head bolts. Two of the threads on the passenger side (right where the heads were leaking) of the head seem to have been stripped. After to torqued the bolts and started to do the first 90 degree turns I noticed two of the bolts went soft (it took almost no pressure to turn them). I had noticed when I was cleaning the threads that the bolt I was using to clean them would not go down as far in these two holes as the other ones. I plan on using ARP studs after I have the block rethreaded so hopefully I won't have this problem again.
Anyway on to my question...what could have caused this? Could they have been improperly torqued from the dealership I bought them from? Maybe they didn't torque them by hand? I was also wondering if they were stripped when I had the gaskets replaced the first time wouldn't the mechanic have noticed that the threads were stripped?
I was curious if anyone here could answer a quick question for me. I purchased a 2001 Trans Am back in June. After having the car for two days it overheated. I took it into a GM dealer and they told me the head gasket had blown. The dealership I bought it from took care of it on their dime, but now about 5 months later I blew another head gasket. I decided to take care of it myself this time and started the process of removing the heads. I took them to a machine shop where they resurfaced them and checked them for cracks.
Well everything worked out fine except when I went to torque down the head bolts. Two of the threads on the passenger side (right where the heads were leaking) of the head seem to have been stripped. After to torqued the bolts and started to do the first 90 degree turns I noticed two of the bolts went soft (it took almost no pressure to turn them). I had noticed when I was cleaning the threads that the bolt I was using to clean them would not go down as far in these two holes as the other ones. I plan on using ARP studs after I have the block rethreaded so hopefully I won't have this problem again.
Anyway on to my question...what could have caused this? Could they have been improperly torqued from the dealership I bought them from? Maybe they didn't torque them by hand? I was also wondering if they were stripped when I had the gaskets replaced the first time wouldn't the mechanic have noticed that the threads were stripped?
