Re: My 1974 2.0 914.

I have had this car since about 1990. a couple of years ago I needed to rebuild the engine. I bought a rebuilt motor and the heads came loose. I took it to a local mechanic to re torque the heads. He could only get to the bottom four bolts on each cylinder as I expected. He said they torqued but one of the studs felt funny and suggested I rebuild the motor. I let him do the rebuild and he said the heads felt fine now. They came loose again. He says he didn't use head gaskets as they were not needed.

I want to get this thing running right again.

Why are my heads coming loose?
Do I need gaskets on this motor. Some mechanics I have talked to say I need head gaskets and others say no. It would be interesting and helpful for you guys to chime in on this subject.

my mechanic recommended a retorque of ALL of the head bolts after x number of miles of break in.

a couple of times in fact

- you can pull all of the tin and access the head bolts for retorque

-or you can drill the tin work (and use plugs to seal the air) so that access is possible without pulling the motor.

Do I need head gaskets?

Nope, no need for head gaskets.

Not only do you not need gaskets, you don't want them.

sorry for the hijack, but why would someone not want them?

You will find a substantial difference of opinion about the head gaskets. This one is mine.

Yes, you need the gaskets. The people who say you don't refer to a VW tech article that says to eliminate them. That tech article was published for VW vans after the 914 production run ended. It refers to an engine that evolved from the Type 4 engine, and has improvements that are not on the 914 engine. The tech article was never meant for the 914 version of the Type 4.

You can ask Capt'n Crusty (John Larson). He has been working on 914 engines since they were new. He says to use the gaskets too. I also site Wes Hildreth, a Dallas shop owner, who also has been working on 914 engines since new. Wes won't build an engine without them.


While I don't have the factory training or experience level of these guys, I have built lots of 914 engines. All of them have had the head gaskets, and I NEVER had a problem with the heads loosening up. My wife's car has been running 2 years on a new rebuild, and the heads have never been re-torqued.

And one of the poster's in this thread runs a machine shop with HUGE 914 head experience.

so strong arguments on both sides
my builder (a 914 specific race shop with 20 years exp) leaves them out too...


either way your loosening heads aren't probably related to your gaskets
you need to re-torque the heads properly... probably twice... as part of the break in procedure

I like that idea!
I think I'll mod my tin to achieve this on the 2056 I'm building.

did the factory use head gaskets?

Yes, the factory used laminated metal gaskets.

HAM doesn't. Raby doesn't. Clay, Cap'n Krusty, and others do. Frequently, each will be able to tell you in detail (with quite a few examples) why "their" way is correct and the "other" way is wrong.

--DD

[quote name='Dave_Darling' date='M Frequently, each will be able to tell you in detail (with quite a few examples) why "their" way is correct and the "other" way is wrong.

--DD
[/quote]
which IMHO is a lot more useful than it sounds at first.

I'm still confused but rather than disassemble the engine I'll retorque the heads and hope for the best. My gut feeling is that it's not going to cure the problem. what do you guys think about torquing the bottom bolts only. I'm really not excited about removing the engine.

only doing half of the job is what probably caused the problem
it will definitely not cure the problem

once they have started to leak they will literally CUT out the aluminum material

depending on how long they have already leaked they could have damaged the heads already..


I wouldn't even bother unless you are going to pull the tin work and try to retorque all of the bolts....

or take the heads off and see whats salvageable.

but retorquing half of the head is NOT going to fix anything

I wished I would have read this before final assembly and installation of my new engine

Brant, have you got any pix of the access holes you cut into the tins?

... and can one cut the access holes with the tins already installed on the engine?

I didn't take pictures this time around
motor is at my father's house right now
I won't be there for 3 weeks unfortunately.

I'm sorry about that Mark
I can take them in a few weeks

I found some rubber grommets that would fit a socket through and I could plug... I cut the holes the size of the grommets I found

brant

.............says the transmission guru ....................

The Cap'n, who has faithfully used the head gaskets for 39 years now, and with great success.

Dont be an asshole, John. I have heard from Raby, who is the latest researcher on the subject. You go on with your "the world is flat" theory. You can use gaskets and be fine, but you dont need them.

Like I said before...

Well, I have only built one so far so my opinion isn't worth . However, I truly believe there a very few, if any, people who are harder on a motor than me and I built mine without. So far so good.



Shoe

I would suspect that something is no longer square. If these heads keep coming loose, then maybe something is not seating flat. This could be the spigots coming out of the block or at the head.