At last head off.

[john charlton]

Finally after a long struggle the head is finally off my swapmeet motor. It fought every inch of the way.I first tried broad screwdriver and thin wedge approach,no go. Then put the motor in a rolling frame and spun it over on a 12 volt battery,the motor was too stiff for the 6 volt to spin it quickly enough,again no go. Hooked up gas and spark and no water. Would only fire on no.1 cylinder,trouble traced to a bad cap ,then ran on all 4.Got very hot very quickly as the pistons are tight in the bores. Shut it down after 20 secs or so as it was getting too hot. I had over the weeks dosed the head studs with WD40 as I suspected they had seized in the head.So every day I ran the motor with the head nuts backed off but still no go. Finally after many attemps the head gasket blew between 2 and 3 . This was good and bad news ,the motor would now not run on 1 and 4 only , curses. Went back broad thin steel wedge approach and gradually the head began to rise .Took hours of slowly teasing it up. The last stage with a wood block and crow bar.Every stud swollen by rust . This motor is a very fresh rebuild still has the boring bar marks in the bores. My guess it was test run and then left without pulling the head down the second time. Water then migrating up the studs but not into the bores luckily. Or maybe out in the rain too long. But it is a great relief I had visions of pulling a head stud out of the block and maybe bit of the block with it !!!

John in no change in the weather England

 

[john charlton]

Forgot to add when the head under tension I was hitting the stud tops with a steel hammer but not too hard that I would damage the block or distort the stud top. I Think this was the trick.

John

 

[ed stanley]

John - we've got a lot better stuff than WD 40 now - over here anyway. Kroil is very good. PB Blaster is excellent in my opinion. There's another called Sea Foam. I've seen these products disolve a lot of rust. At least your perseverance finally paid off!