OIL pressure and finding oil in strange places...

[Quantum-man]

Brian,
I wouldn't bother searching for new shims. The old shims are likely as not as new, the valve seats may have sunk very slightly, but the main cause of the closing of the gap, is the wearing out of the valve.

Despite the valve wearing, and unless the edge has burnt, it is likely to be perfectly mated to the seat, and is the best valve for the job, subject to a little regrinding perhaps.

There is a minimum spec for the valve thickness, so until that is reached, or the valve stem bent somehow, or over slack; as this is the generally replaced item, it would be better to grind the ends of the valves to increase the shim gaps. That way when you eventually replace the valves with new ones, the original shims will be in or near spec...

[hanse1bd]

UPDATE:
After waiting over a month for my headgasket to arrive, I finally pulled the head on my VW Tracker. And what did I find? No smoking gun. No breaks or mis-shaped o-rings. Because of the mess that happens when you pull the head, I couldn't tell where the oil was leaking into the coolant. I did notice that my head bolts didn't require much torque to loosen. I will be installing ARP studs, and a Felpro gasket. The Felpro gasket has an o-ring to seal the oil drain galley, which the Victor Renz didn't.

http://s1215.photobucket.com/user/hanse1bd/library/

The link has bigger pics. Maybe you can see something I missed. I think the oil in the area of #9 bolt got there because my engine tilts down on that end (its longitudinal now) and the oil was pooled there when I pulled the bolt, it ran down the hole.
Also in the link you can see my homemade oil baffle. It worked well. Very little oil in the intake this time. I ordered a plastic baffle that covers the whole camshaft, but my baffle works well, and I like being able to see the cam lobes when I remove the oil fill cap. So I think I'll keep the homemade baffle.

Any ideas on how to purge the oil from the radiator and water jacket? I think most of the oil ended up floating in the radiator. You can see nice green coolant that ran down into the cylinder when I pulled the head. And when I loosened the thermostat housing, it ran out clean until the very end.
I was thinking about getting a 5 gallon bucket of hot water, mix in some laundry detergent (low suds), stick a utility pump in the bucket, and put the ouput hose in the top of the radiator. Let it flow through and drain out into the bucket from the thermostat housing. Recirculate until the water is gooey, then change the water a few times.

[hanse1bd]

Well I got it all back together, ran it up to operating temp, and retorqued the studs to 80 ft lbs. Very consistent. All 10 required about 1/8 of a turn to get back to 80.

My detergent in a bucket idea worked out pretty good as well. I removed the thermostat and let the water/detergent recirculate for an hour. Then I flushed the system with about 20 gallons of clear water. I let the last 5 gallons recirculate, which trapped more oil on the water surface in the bucket. I don't know if I'll ever get all of the oil out of the cooling system, but It looks much better than it did.

[Fatmobile]

Niiice.
Another one back on the road.

[hanse1bd]

UPDATE: I drove it 60 miles. Next morning I checked, and I have oil in the coolant. That is with a new head gasket and APR studs. I torqued them to 80 ft/lbs, ran the engine to operating temp, cooled and retorqued.

I don't know what to do now. The only logical thing would be a warped/cracked head/block. But It didn't have oil in the coolant before I replaced the head gasket the first time, and since then it hasn't been overheated. It got up to 218 for a short time, but I manually turned on the electric fan it it came down to 210-215. Since then I adjusted the thermostat on the fan to kick on about 190, and now the temp never climbs above 205.

I don't suppose that replacing all of my coolant with oil would work out very well.
I really can't afford a rebuild right now, or a new head, or the machine work.
My first oil after the first headgasket was regular 15-40. When I changed it at the 600 mile retorque, I was starting to get oil in the coolant. The fresh oil was 5-40 synthetic. After the second head gasket, I'm running 0-40 Mobil synthetic (it was the same price as 5-40.) Maybe I should switch back to 15-40 regular, or maybe even 20-50 to slow the leak until I can afford a rebuild or head?
Any other ideas, maybe something I'm missing?
Any one have a 1.6 na taking up space in your garage that you want to sell cheap?

[TylerDurden]

Did you use any HG sealant? Hylomar is not the cheapest, but might be worth a shot.

Definitely get a straightedge on the surfaces as a baseline.

[Fatmobile]

There aren't alot of places with oil that is under pressure.
With the head gasket it's just inside the o-ring that wraps around the bolt hole.

Soo it's hard to believe a new FELpro headgasket would leak right there,
even if the head was warped I'd expect a combustion chamber to water jacket leak first.

Reading back through your stuff I see this:
"The Felpro gasket has an o-ring to seal the oil drain galley, which the Victor Renz didn't. "
Yes it does, they all do,.. they are supposed to anyway, lot's of pressure there.
Your picture doesn't show a trace of it being there either,.. looks like the o-ring could have fallen out of your Victor Renz head gasket before you installed it.

[hanse1bd]

I used Hylomar the first time. in the picture above, you can see the blue residue on the block. I didn't use it this time because the FELpro instructions said to install dry, and it has wider orange sealant strips built in than the Victor Reinz did.
Looks like I need to buy a machinist's straight edge, one more head gasket, and try again.
I still don't feel 100% comfortable with my new 36mm oil pump pushing 100 psi. I would swap my old oil pump back in, but it is not so easy on the Tracker. Front axle and crossmember are in the way. I could possibly drop the axle, undo the motor mounts and lift the engine enough to take the pan off, but it might be easier to just pull the motor.