Carnage week continues: The good, the bad, and the ugly

The head has finally come off and we’ve assessed the damage. I’ll make this as concise as possible:

The Good

• The cylinder wall is not damaged. We’re unable to feel any scratches at all and it looks just as good as the other two cylinders on that bank.
• The valves do have some minor scratches, but appear to be otherwise undamaged.
• Used parts to replace the pieces that were damaged (see below) look to be pretty cheap.
• No broken bolts at all, woohoo!
• It appears as though we’ve located the rest of the washer. It doesn’t seem that any of it got passed the exhaust valves and into the front turbo.
• The job went really smoothly and took a lot less time than I had expected. I also was really diligent about labeling all of the bolts we removed and the turbo-related pipes that start to look alike after they’re removed from the car. This should really help when everything is reassembled.

(Bolts removed during the job labeled with shreds of paper for the inevitable rebuild portion. My wife hates that I’m using a dresser we’re storing in the garage as a place to put my oily stuff.)

(Turbo-related pipes labeled with painters tape and a Sharpie. Take  a lesson here guys, always label stuff to make it easier to put back in)

The Bad

• I’m a bonehead for not draining the coolant out of the engine. I got it all out of the radiator, of course, but I neglected the two drain plugs on the two banks of cylinders. As such, there is coolant over every god damn thing.
• We couldn’t figure out how to get in there to remove the bolts holding the exhaust manifold onto the head, so we just unbolted the manifold from the turbo and removed the manifold with the head. Now that the entire assembly is out of the car, I need to figure out how to get that thing off there.
• The head itself is definitely chewed up. There are portions of it that come very close to the piston and they are beat to hell. There was a piece of the washer that was dented into the piston that was certainly smacking the head over and over. This is probably what was causing the sound. I don’t know that it’s repairable at this point, so I might just have to replace it.
• The piston is also pretty jacked. It will definitely need to be replaced. Not only will this cost me some more cash, but I’ll also replace the crankshaft bearings while I have them out for replacing the piston. Might as well, but again, more money to be spent.

The Ugly

I think the pictures here will speak for themselves.

(Damage to the piston in cylinder #1 on the exhaust side of the piston.)

(Damage to the piston on the opposite side. Check out the little dimples from all the less damaging impacts)

(Dents in the bottom of the head. See those arc like scratches on the valves?)

 

(More head damage of the “better looking” intake side)

Next steps:

Well, at this point I’m figuring out which parts I need to purchase to get the car back on its feet. I’ll be doing the 120k mile service while I have all of this apart, so that includes a new timing belt, tensioner, water pump, a bunch of gaskets and a few other things. I’m also going to need a new piston, maybe new crankshaft bearings, and possibly a completely new (used) head. I’ll ask around, but I seriously doubt the damage to the head can be repaired without its performance being negatively affected. My guess? I’ll be out 600 bucks when all is said and done. Luckily I have some great resources to help me figure this out, find parts, and to re-assemble everything. I’ll post back once I have all the parts purchased, and then again after everything is rebuilt. Wish me luck!

– Alex