[alfa] V6 cylinder head held up by cylinder liners

["Rich Hirsch" <rhirsch@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear digesti,

I'm replacing the head gaskets on the 2.5 '87 Milano and I've run into a
problem.
The cylinder head doesn't compress the gasket properly. With the head gasket
and
cylinder head in place and torqued down to 56 ft-lbs., there is a small gap
between
the top of the gasket and the bottom of the cylinder head. This gap is about
1mm wide
and runs all the way around the cylinder head. The gap is large enough that
when coolant was added to the overflow bottle, the it actually poured (!)
out of the gap.
(BTW the cams are timed correctly and there is no apparent interference
between
the pistons and valves.)

In examining the block and cyl. head, the problem appears to be that the
head is
not seating properly because the cyl. liners are sticking up too high. When
I measure
the cylinder liner protrusion above the block, it is about 1.5mm. Workshop
manual
says this SHOULD be 0.01mm - 0.06mm. (My measurement was done with
hold-down clamps in place and torqued to 10 ft-lbs.)

The obvious conclusion is that the liners moved up while the head was off.

This is not easy to accept since:

1) I did not rotate the engine while the head was off (I did not use
hold-down clamps either).
2) All six cyl. liners are off-spec to about the same extent (ca. 1.5mm).
3) If the liners moved up so easily, why would they not reseat with the
application of 56 ft-lbs of torque?

Another problem is that a friend measured the liner protrusion on one of his
2.5 V6 engines and
he also measures about 1.5mm! Is the spec of < 0.06mm correct?

The big question is what do I do now?

1) Try to force the liners back down?
2) Remove the liner, clean up the seating surface, renew the O-ring and
reseat?
Can I do this from the top without removing the engine?
3) ????

All suggestions are welcome!!

Rich Hirsch
'87 Milano (problem child at moment)
'78 Spider
'67 Duetto
St Louis AROC newsletter ed.
St Louis MO USA
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