Head bolts letting go after 150 kms?

**Roverlord off road spares** · 31st July 2013, 07:05 PM

Originally Posted by wyll

To many variables in this one to blame head bolts, his workmanship for one
Dosnt seem to understand tourque to yield bolts and who retorques cyl heads these days?
did he get heads machined is the block square and flat, is the waterpump ok
was the radiator cleaned out and tested? plus many more
did the motor have a major overheat, have had this where a lot of money was spent getting every thing perfect and the headgasket let go within a short time put down to head-block moving when hot ended up supplying customer with second hand engine.
the only head job i have seen fail due to poor quality head bolts was a el falcon which lasted a week, then 3 bolts lost there heads. cutomer was on holiday and car came into workshop on a truck, new gasket and quality head bolts problem solved . customer paid our bill and went back to origonal workshop
sandy

It started like this
Dear roverlordoffroadspares,

Hi, These head bolt's are of very poor quality. After fitting with new head gasket's and re tensioning the vehicle travelled only 150 km before blowing the gasket's between every cylinder and the water jacket's.
Once pulled down again it has become obvious the leaking is due to the head bolt's as the release tension varied between 40-70nm, the block deck surface and cylinder head's are still within warp tolerance. If you do not refund my money or send replacement head bolt's I will purchase more from your store just to leave you with negative feedback!

Thankyou!

Dear ******,

Hi , 1stly your threat at the end of your message is not really called for, we pride ourselves in customer service and quality products and are quite insulted.
There is a way to talk to people. The bolts are very good quality Land Rover mechanics use the same bolts. Thousand of these bolts have been purchased from our supplier and never in history have had a bother.
What method of tensioning did you use? tension to degrees or just torque wrench settings, they are bolts torque to yield , meaning they are 1stly torqued to a set Tension then an Angle gauge is used and the further tightening is does in degree stages. Also what Head gasket did you use? was it Elring or some other brand? I suggest you look into the method of installation used and the head gasket quality before assuming it is the Bolts that have failed.

Torque to yield bolts do not require retensioning and are not designed to ,so why did you add more stress to the bolts by retensioning? this is probably where the failure has occurred as you have disturbed them after initial fitting WHERE THEY ARE STRECTHED TO SPECS.

Dear roverlordoffroadspares,

Elring head gaskets were used, The cylinder heads were machined and the block was machined as the engine was fully rebuilt. The head bolt's were tightened to a total value of 90nm which is per manufacturers specification's with a snap on digitech tension wrench in the appropriate sequence, after start up and running to temperature the bolt's were then checked of tension 2 were at 85nm and the rest were still at 90nm. this is standard practice for a Mechanic! after an hour of driving the engine failed. When pulling the engine apart it was obviously the bolts as 12 out of 20 were loose and they all show significant stretching above the top thread's which is not normal for any headbolt!

Thankyou!

Dear *******,

Hi, as per Land Rover specifications, here is the Land Rover Technicians workshop manual instructions for Land Rover V8 Heads for Discovery.
It depends on the suffix of engine, early 14 bolt and the later 10 bolts, the 10 bolt is done with a dial gauge to degrees,. There is no mention of
re tightening after,.
see attached extract.
Regards, Mario

Dear roverlordoffroadspares,

Note the suffix b part mate, This engine has no suffix therefore is required to be tensioned to 90nm not 20nm + 2 stages of 90' okay!

Thankyou!

Dear *****,

Look if you want help then provide the engine number we are trying to resolve and help, if you have this attitude. then forget it.

- roverlordoffroadspares

Dear ******,

Ok, the problem is you have used these bolts which are torque to yeild bolts... meaning they are tensioned to then and then dial gauged 90 degrees , then 90 degrees, they are as we said Torque to yield bolts, they can not be installed by your method of torque fitting,
If you are using your method then different bolts are required that are not stretch bolts that's why they have failed.
regards, Mario

- roverlordoffroadspares

Dear roverlordoffroadspares,

Okay, well thankyou for selling and sending me the wrong bolt's and causing an engine failure! You did an excellent job. And you have fantastic Customer relations too.. I asked for Headbolt's to suit a 10 bolt 96 Discovery and that's what you sold me.

Thankyou!

Dear *****

Hang on a bit, you received the correct parts for a 10 bolt, you asked and we said yes, they will, you as a mechanic should know about what torque to yield means, if YOU had of correctly fitted them as required in the correct manner then you wouldn't of had a failure. We advertise as torque to yield every one else uses them in correct manner.
Sorry you made an incorrect installation, if you had of been nice about it in your first message instead of threats, we could have worked out something.
Yes we have very good customer service, but if it's not our fault and we are not there to supervise your mechanical ability.
regards

- roverlordoffroadspares

**Blknight.aus** · 31st July 2013, 07:17 PM

hey feel free to put him in touch with this mechanic who will quite happily show him all the errors in his message.

if its a 10 bolt then its automatically torque to yeild not to 90ftlb

and if it failed on ALL of the cylinders at the same time and the bolts were all at various release torques in a given range which bolts were tighter than others.

this whole thing smacks to me of a crappy head and his next step needs to be to have the alignment of the rocker shaft pads checked, I'll bet that the head is going to come up shaped curved convex or concave with a nearly flat face.

I'm so confident of this that I'll pay for his replacement bolts if Im wrong.

**Roverlord off road spares** · 31st July 2013, 07:17 PM

Originally Posted by justinc

Hey mate, don't worry the facts are that he claims the bolts 'failed' when tightened using normal early spec tension specs. These are WAY less than the TTY tensions in the real world, IE the TTY bolts are actually stronger than the early bolts. What a turkey. He IS NOT A MECHANIC.

Don't sweat it mate, there are people like this all over the planet, unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions.

Oh, and BTW there is NO NEED to retension head bolts on a Rover V8, using shim OR composite gaskets. In doing so he has introduced a leak because a retension requires loosening the head bolts FIRST. Again, what a turkey.

Taken from ACL website,

Re-torque Procedure
After a cylinder head gasket has been installed and engine reassembled.
Start engine, carry out all necessary tuning and engine checks (including test drive of vehicle).
Allow the engine to cool down (preferably overnight).
Remove the valve cover.
Back off one cylinder head bolt at a time, in the same sequence as assembly, applying oil under the cylinder head bolt and retorquing the cylinder head bolts to the manufacturer's specifications.
Continue this process until all head bolts have been retensioned.

Doing THIS to a Rover V8 with Elring composite gaskets will result in leaks, 100% !!!!!

You can copy and send him this post if you like Mario. And I'll PM you my contact number if you like so I can explain it to him

JC

Justin, thanks mate for the offer, but I am just going to move on.
I wasted too much time today and am behind on getting some members orders processed . Sorry Guys.

**Roverlord off road spares** · 31st July 2013, 10:19 PM

Originally Posted by bee utey

I've once had ACL disallow a claim for head gasket failure with the explanation: "Loss of head bolt tension " so I suspect it's a common dodge to get out of liability. As you can't control the installation I would recommend you insist he sends you the bolts back for testing. If nothing else you can easily measure their free length against unused ones. Stretch bolts should always be fitted by angle torque methods.

Also ask for the engine km travelled as anything over 250,000km is likely to be past a simple head gasket fix. Ask which cylinder numbers are getting coolant as if its the middle two on each side then the block is likely stuffed. I'm getting sick of seeing 3.9s with stuffed blocks turning up here (8 out of 10 at least) , it's all too common in their old age. Quite frankly one decent overheat and the liners come loose when the blocks crack, and all subsequent engine work is wasted.

Funny you should mention the head failure, a mechanic i know purchased one of those new improved 300Tdi heads from the UK. Saved heaps, until without warning after couple of months the Head gasket failed. He had one of those engine saver alarms fitted that displays temps, had a heater hose blow and with in minutes stuffed. He was then chasing a multi shim layer 3 hole gasket from me. The gasket supplied from the UK was an ordinary one. I suggested he contact the UK supplier he bought it from, which he did and the seller in UK said either could be used.
I'm a bit cautious supplying a gasket to him on something he'd bought O/S. But he told me what he wanted the new multi layer so that's what I will supply.
Will find out if he gets it going without any head damage. Soon I suppose

**isuzurover** · 1st August 2013, 02:24 AM

Originally Posted by Roverlord off road spares

Funny you should mention the head failure, a mechanic i know purchased one of those new improved 300Tdi heads from the UK. Saved heaps, until without warning after couple of months the Head gasket failed. He had one of those engine saver alarms fitted that displays temps, had a heater hose blow and with in minutes stuffed. He was then chasing a multi shim layer 3 hole gasket from me. The gasket supplied from the UK was an ordinary one. I suggested he contact the UK supplier he bought it from, which he did and the seller in UK said either could be used.
I'm a bit cautious supplying a gasket to him on something he'd bought O/S. But he told me what he wanted the new multi layer so that's what I will supply.
Will find out if he gets it going without any head damage. Soon I suppose

Forget the MLS, he should be using an elring gasket. Also, the usual practice is just to fit the thickest gasket.

**Blknight.aus** · 1st August 2013, 05:01 AM

and just one more against him...

The cylinder heads were machined and the block was machined as the engine was fully rebuilt.

if the block and the head had a high/low spot in the same spot and it wasnt picked up during the machining/build then it was never going to seal up in the first place.

**Roverlord off road spares** · 1st August 2013, 07:29 AM

Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

and just one more against him...

if the block and the head had a high/low spot in the same spot and it wasnt picked up during the machining/build then it was never going to seal up in the first place.

Anyway, He has put in a PAYPAL dispute. Which we knew he would try.
Sellers never succeed in these I have been informed. The money is not that much really, but I go through the process of the bull.
Cheers Mario

**VM_Motori** · 1st August 2013, 09:48 AM

Good luck with it either way I am sure your a head up fella.

I used to be a mechanic many moons ago and a simple rule I had was if you pull a head off then it needs a light skim and the block MUST be tested to be true, Before re-installing. (even more so on an alloy motor)

Have done my VM motor with the same process 5000k so far no leak

Sounds like a cheap mechanic trying to save a $ for the customer in the wrong place's

just my .2c

VM

**Davo** · 1st August 2013, 11:50 AM

Originally Posted by Roverlord off road spares

Anyway, He has put in a PAYPAL dispute. Which we knew he would try.
Sellers never succeed in these I have been informed. The money is not that much really, but I go through the process of the bull.
Cheers Mario

I had a seller win when I lodged a dispute, which I thought was pretty odd considering they'd blatantly lied about the thing. But in your case you may be okay. If the bolts really were bad, then they'd be from a huge batch that would be failing everywhere.

**Roverlord off road spares** · 1st August 2013, 07:21 PM

Originally Posted by Davo

I had a seller win when I lodged a dispute, which I thought was pretty odd considering they'd blatantly lied about the thing. But in your case you may be okay. If the bolts really were bad, then they'd be from a huge batch that would be failing everywhere.

I got on to ebay and reported him for threats and his language they are taking action, as for paypal I will forward all correspondence we had and how his initial email wanted me to replace the bolts and refund him too, and the blackmailing.
The bolts by the way are UK same as Land Rover and used by most Land Rover mechanic in Aus, they were not Britparts

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