Rovin4life, what's your opinion on the head torque sequence or best practice?

 

I am in the middle of a HG job on my 01 Disco 2, and just put the heads on. You need a breaker bar and a pipe extension for those bolts. About 2.5 ft of leverage is crucial to get your last turns (smoothly). I used the procedure in the rave manual, tighten all the 20 Nm, then 90, then 90 again. Also I waited about an hour between steps to give the gasket a chance to compress. MAKE SURE those bolt holes are thoroughly flushed and blown out with an air compressor so they are visibly SHINY on the inside. Each 90 turn should feel smooth with the same torsional resistance for each bolt, otherwise you might have junk in there. From what I understand, those bolts plastically deform when you torque them to spec, thus it makes sence why they need to be replaced every time and why the torque sequence is so rigorous.

Upper intake manifold goes on today and hopfully I can fire it up

 

I was wondering about that. I think I asked something about that last night. I'm no expert on any specific car or truck but it does seem to me that 90 degrees then another 90 degrees doesn't guarantee at all that you will have EVEN torque on all bolts (or does it?)

I don't know, thanks for all your replies guys, your time is much appreciated.

Do you think that this H/G going bad could have been my weird, random hesitation problem I've been having for the past month or so? I wonder if it's been misfiring a bit, but I don't know... ????

 

A lot of company’s use the stretch to yield method of torqueing bolts, with good results. I just think LR have bored this old 215 cu in motor too much and have not left enough meat around the cylinders. What I really have trouble rapping my head around is you have an iron bolt threading into an aluminum block which is supposed to compress the steel fire ring on the head gasket, now which metal is softer steel, iron or aluminum, so which ones is really going to stretch?

 

I think you're right about that. Land Rover should be a bit more responsible about their engineering. Seems like they have a bad tendency to "build now, ask questions later" if you know what I mean. Seems to me they never perfect anything, just move on to the next ignorant design and hope for the best.