Valve replacement success!

Alrighty!  It took me forEVER, but it's done.  There were a lot of little things that I learned along the way, all of which made the whole process drag out.  Taking the head off wasn't the biggest problem, really.  That was done in the first day (saturday), and honestly if I'd had the valve and the tool, the valve would have been replaced in that first day as well.  But, of course, things don't always go as planned.  The valve was definitely burnt, however, so at least I was correct in my diagnosis.

Getting the replacement valve was another story.  I had a whole engine in the back garage I was attempting to disassemble for this purpose, but I had an issue with the head bolts.  Specifically that one of them rounded the head off, and so I couldn't get the head off the block, and thus couldn't get the valve out of the head to replace the burnt one in this engine.  Starting the second day (sunday), this was my mission: to get the head off and retrieve a valve.  After a sufficient application of force and a lot of swearing, the head was lopped off and the valve was successfully acquired. I then used my $0.21 tool to remove AND install said valves.
Then it was reinstall time.  I probably should have lapped the valve while it was out, but I didn't.  If I were to build an engine and tear it down completely I definitely would have done so, but in this case I was just getting shit done.  Right about now (late monday) I found out that I had 10 new head bolts (out of 12) that were about an inch shorter than what came out of the engine.  Everything about them was exactly the same except for the length, so I thought that perhaps there had been a design change and I didn't worry about it.  Right up until I was torquing them up and 2 of them pulled out of the block.  That didn't make me happy.  I got on the horn to iPd and told them about the issue, and since one of their techs lives close to me, I asked if he could possibly bring them home to trade me for the ones that were wrong.  He did, and I got everything installed the next day (tuesday).

It took me some time to figure out the timing marks on the crank - apparently it's either a microscopic spot on the valley of the crank gear, or two tiny marks on two hills of the gear.  My car is a '97, which means it SHOULD have the spot on the valley, but it didn't and did have the spots on the hills ('98+).  After researching for a couple of hours to determine that yes, indeed the two hill marks  were correct, I got the thing timed correctly and started it up.  And then found out that the oil drain for the turbo wasn't seated in the block properly so it was draining out onto the floor.  Son of a...  So come Wednesday I got the car up on stands, cleaned up the floor a bit to soak up the oil, removed the drain tube and got it reinstalled correctly.  A quick fix to the power steering pump - damned thing started leaking THE DAY I brought the car to my parents to fix - and we were off to test it out and make sure it didn't throw any codes.  No codes were thrown, car ran and drove great, and so it was off to get it emissions tested.  Which she passed with flying colors, so the 850 is back on DD duty for the girlfriend.  While it was down I tested out my Thor wheels on it - I love the way they look but the tires are WAY too big, so I had to take them off before we went a driving.  Time for some Volans, methinks.  Now I'm not quite so apprehensive about working on the newer cars, so when I pick one up I'll be able to modify it to my hearts' content.

Summoning the energy

So this weekend I shall attempt my very first whiteblock head removal operation.  The girlfriends' 850 has a burnt valve (I think) and it won't pass emissions due to a cyl 1 misfire.  So I have to remove the head, figure out a way to remove the valves (without the special tool), make sure that the valve seats are okay, and then replace the valve(s) with one(s) from the spare head I have in the garage.  Well, assuming I can get that head off the engine since one of the headbolts rounded off and I can't for the life of me get that damned thing apart.  Wish me luck, people.

In other news, I bled the brakes on Betty after I nearly crashed her into traffic due to a complete brake failure.  It has a very slow leak *somewhere* - anywhere from the distribution block to the rear calipers.  One of the rear calipers was spewing fluid onto the wheel, so I suspect that - but that could have just been a loose bleed screw as well.  Keeping an eye on it though and I'll replace whatever needs replacing when I figure out just exactly where it's coming from.  For now it brakes fine, and I'm glad it didn't bugger up the master cylinder when my foot went all the way to the floor trying to get the damned thing to stop.

While I was futzing with the brakes I replaced a couple of wheel studs on the rear.  Apparently at some point a PO or a wheel shop broke off a stud or two and never bothered replacing them.  I found this out back when I finally started doing work on the car, but after I picked up replacement studs I didn't have a chance to actually fix it until now.  Was a LOT easier than I expected, only had to remove the caliper and pull the rotor to get the new stud into place.  I'd heard of people needing to pull the halfshaft in order to fit studs, but then that could have been longer than stock studs, as these *barely* fit without doing that.

Anyway, wish me luck for tomorrow.  And probably the next day, as this IS my first time with a whiteblock disassembly.  I suppose I should get used to it though, it's the wave of the future!