14 May Head Games
Today, we’ll be returning to the dissection of Gold Wheels’ heart as we send out the heads to be cleaned up a bit.
When we last left Gold Wheels, the block had been stripped and ready to be sent out for hot tanking, which is a chemical-based cleaning procedure. However, the block isn’t the only part of the motor that we’ll be giving a deep clean to. We’ll also be getting the heads cleaned, which means we’ll have to take them apart, as well. With the block all finished up, we turned our attention to the heads, which still had the camshafts and other valvetrain parts attached.
So, following the correct unbolting procedure, we removed the camshafts, followed by the valve lifters, which we arranged in order and labeled them so we wouldn’t forget. When this many parts are coming out of an engine, it helps to keep your ducks in a row as you move forward. These aren’t ducks, but they’re close enough. Ducks are practically metal cylinders anyhow, right?
We made sure to keep track of everything using tape and marker, just to make sure nothing got misplaced or moved around needlessly while we waited for all the motor’s components to return to us.
Isn’t Gold Wheels’ new ride height really awesome, you guys? Maybe we should just turn it into a donk.
With the heads stripped down to their bare essentials, we sent them off to be hot tanked along with the block. But that’s not all the head work we’ve had this week. We also had a customer’s X5 4.4i come in with a head that needed replacement. Once we sourced the replacement, we set about breaking down both heads and swapping over the necessary parts to the new one. Just like with Gold Wheels, when you start disassembling a head, it’s good to keep everything in the same place, or else bad things will happen when one crucial part disappears. Either way, the head swap was completed, and the X5 is now back out in the wild, making the most of an all-wheel drive system that’s barely capable of driving down a gravel road.
Have a great day, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for some work of a totally different nature!
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