Well, here's the repair. Up close and personal it looks like the aluminum just flowed with no notable interruptions. Then someone pinged it here and there with a punch as though they were confirming their work had no voids, etc. Dunnon on that - guessing:
The head's back on. Tomorrow I'll bolt the rest up and I hope to drive it to the Spokane airport to pick up my bro in law who's coming for T-Day (brother of the 292,000 '93 80). So John Davies - stay by the phone in case I need you to rescue us......heh. Been wanting to meet you anyhow, so..
The head bolts all measured easily in spec, so I reused them. On the third one, the resistance suddenly dropped for a second. So I unbolted them all and pulled this one out for a look see. No change in measurement or appearance. Slapped it back in, and this time it did not give that wierd feeling through the rest of the tightening sequence. I recall a couple of the bolts doing this last time and I've been wanting to ask Rick if this is why you regretted not chasing the head bolt threads before reinstalling? Did you get a couple with this wierd feeling, too or was there something else that made you feel that way? Anyhow, I chalked it up to some slippage in the head/washer area rather than the threads. This based upon the large number of oiled threads engaged and the probability that some frictional change occurred simultaneously along all the threads, vs the washer sliding for a bit suddenly when it had been pinned down to the head. Dunno for sure, but it felt good that it happend only on #3 so easy to pull out and measure to confirm nothing amiss. So, I guess we all now know you can use an 80 head bolt at LEAST 3 times. I hope nobody reading this ever has to use that info.
I put the gasket on dry (chickened out on the fancy sealant). I left the head in the garage so it was the same temp. And my bro in law helped immensely by keeping the tightening sequence as his job and simply pointing to the next one for me. As this is stressful, it can feel a bit overwhelming to do alone unless you're in the zen mood. I was not after cleaning apple cider off the interior. I just followed his pointed sequence and he simply studied the FSM and oriented himself to point. We took to calling the rear two buried by the firewall "back to the cave..." as it required an odd ultra short extension to reach with room to swing the pipe back there.''
We got here tightened up on the block, and tomorrow we'll get after the camshaftsand timimg gears.''
I'm thinking tne mudisc will be Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" while I slug a huge bowl of coffee and start to smile a bit in the morning. Heck it's all downhill from here. Just a bunch of bolts.
