One Side Head On

I finally got the passenger side head on last night. Honestly, I was hoping to get both heads on but the bolt torquing process took me much longer than anticipated. Luckily, I was able to resolve the issues I've been having with the exhaust manifold.

As it turns out the header didn't have residual gasket it was pitted. I called the machine shop but they wanted $208 to manchine both sides. So talked to a few people and came up with an alternate procedure. First I polished the header with a steel brush to get off any old gasket and rust. I cleaned the resultant dust off with a rag and some brake cleaner. Then I filled the largest of the pits on the passenger exhaust using JB Weld, and scraped the area flat with a razor blade before it hardened. After letting that cure for 24 hours, I cleaned the headers with brake cleaner and spread a layer of copper coat gasket compound under the new exhaust gasket. The plan is to spread some of the compound on the top of the gasket to before bolting the manifold to the head.

Passenger side exhaust header. This is the one I polished and filled the defects with JB weld. The pitted areas are still obvious in the lower left area of the picture due to the color difference but now they're at least flat instead of actual pits.

Driver side header. This one isn't as shiny because it was in better condition from the beginning. (The lighting conditions are a little different too.) I didn't spend as much time polishing it and didn't need to use any JB weld to fill pits.

This is the driver side header after putting on the copper based exhaust sealant and the gasket. Hopefully that'll prevent any leaks. Plus, it looks pretty neat.

As I mentioned tightening the head bolts took me over an hour. Mostly it was due to the multi-step process for tightening the head bolts and the access issues associated with leaving the engine in the car. Tightening the bolts is a 7-8 step process for 6 bolts not including getting each 10" bolt in far enough to start torquing. This is the critical step in the process where proper torque matters. Thanks to this digital torque adaptor below, which I mentioned in a previous post, I felt confident that my wrenches were applying the proper torque to the bolts.
As you can see it is clamped in my bench vise. The torque wrench goes in the top and the torque being applied is displayed on the screen. You can set a target torque and the device provides both audio and visual warning when you are approaching that level of torque. I checked both my wrenches with this device each time I used them and I checked all 3 items at a given torque level. It looks like my inexpensive Harbor Freight torque wrenches (1/2" and 3/8" drive) and the device shown above are at least precise and likely accurate too.

Here's the head on one side of the engine. The assembly process has started.