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Good luck.

Sounds like a bit of a nightmere.

Hi Tim,

Thought I may as well chime in from left field.

Your original idea of making a small recess around the base of the studs for the anti seize fluids to well up and soak was definitely a good idea. An extension of this idea is to use a long tube- like bimetal saw which should be the length of the head thickness.

The process would be to place the saw over the studs and create a cut around the base of the studs and in between the head material thereby cutting up the corrosion material itself. The saw should just fit over the stud diameter. If you cannot buy one, make one from stock tube yourself.

This should leave you heads intact and the studs and just chew up the corrosion binding . Havind done that, the use of the head puller and some more anti seize should do it. Applying vibration from things like impact wrenches is also usefull as is heat together with progressive but gentle wedging on opposing ends/sides if the head plane itself will not separate but I don't think that this will be necessary.

When you eventually sort the sucker out (and you will), the most important thing for future maintenace is to use an anti seize compound as has been said before or dipping the head bolts in Tectyl 506 from Valvoline which is my preference during reinstallation.

Hope this helps.

MD Another good idea! May give that a whirl if the drill setup dosent go to plan. Heard of another plan also in wich you dob a bit of arc weld on to the top of the stud. Theory being to heat and expand then contract and break the fusion between.
Managed to score a 2.5L and a 3.0 L motor for spares. 2.5 has a broken rod, and the heads nearly smacked me in the face when I took them off!! Sooo will definitly be able to construct a runner out of the 3 of them. Thinking may now lean towards a pair of "s"cams and total seal rings with a small increase in compression. Take a fracky of the heads. Been without the thing for a few weeks now, a few more is not gonna make much difference, specially if I can have a bit more torque and HP to play with... Cheers to all that have helped. Much appreciated. Tim.

Tim,

Your experience reminded me of a similar challenge I had many years ago with a Fiat shopping trolley (128 sedan). For some reason it didn't take to kindly to being revved to 8,000rpm in standard tune, and it started to mix its fluids. To cut a long story short, I gave up trying to remove the head once I established that it would run without head nuts and sent it to a local Italian car specialist (he gave me a lift in his Alfetta GTV and I was instantly hooked). After a week of trying non-destructive and destructive methods of removing the head, we threw in the towel and got another motor.

I hope that you have more luck.

Grant Richardson
ex-pat Kiwi in UK (more Alfas over here!)

Any way you can heat up the aluminum (3 propane torches applied to the aluminum around the studs, may need a buddy to help) and get it to expand a little bit before the steel heats up. This might allow you to remove the head?.?. Just don't go over 1000 degrees(hence propane)!

Grant, its posing a challenge all right, but I'm up for it. Also learning alot about these motors as well. X-rad, been done the propane track as well. Not a flicker! Still open to sugestions. Cheerz Guys. Tim.

The only other thing I can think of is to rig up two steel plates, one bolted to the intake studs and one bolted to the exhaust studs. These are then linked to the top of a short hydraulic ram. The bottom of the ram contacts a plate pushing on the head studs. Be sure to sread the load evenly. Might be easier to find another engine?!

Hey X, tried porta power on quite a few different angles and places. No movement. there is some relief in the grip now though. After drilling down through the studs, we have about 30mm of movement. Hope the studs will come out of the block easier. Can allways drill them out too.
Managed to score 2 motors the other day. 1 2.5 litre and 1 3.0 litre. Have plenty of spares now. Thanx Tim.

After countless atempts and methods of trying to remove those barstard heads, they were finally released from their hold today. Gave up on the stud drilling idea after a couple. Long hole saw round the stud to about half way down on the top row. Penetrating fluid poured in and left there a few days. Then 2 porta powers were bought in. 1 rated at "10 ton" the other rated at "5 ton". And they only just managed to crack the bond between stud and head. BANG!!!!!
Now to rebuild........

Tim,
Congrats!!!!!! Hope you don't have too much aluminum welding and grinding to do!
X

yikes that was quite the ordeal!!!

Ah yes! Indeed. Gonna have to use the crank,pistons and liners out of the original block and put them into the the one that had the broken rod. I fear that the deck of the other block may be too much of an expense to get up to scratch. Has some errosion that would need to be welded and milled to achieve flat mating surface for the heads. Also the 15 tons of pressure has left its marks there too.
But we can rebuild it. Better than before. Stronger, faster, and able to leap over a building in a single bound!

Thanx to all concerned. Tim.