As some of you may know i bought some M42 supertech valves, retainers and springs off E-bay from a guy in ireland from an unfinished project.
These are solid and made of better suited material than the bmw ones for my boosted application.
However, when i got them and measured them the stems were only 6mm not the usual 7mm on and e30 m42, e30 is the important bit here, emailed supertech ot ask how i was supposed to fit then and made out i'd just got them from one of there dealers.
Turns out then never new the m42 was in a E30 and these valves were made for the e36 m42 which had 6mm valves from mid 92 onwards up till the m44 came along. however they did offer to make me a set of new guides so they would fit my e30 7mm head for £8 each plus Vat + shipping
Pure luck would have it i bought a e36 m42 head off kedge last year with a job lot of m42 bits he was selling and the guides look to me good in this so ive have sent this off to be re cut to suit the new valves.
the other problem is that the stem seals are also 6mm and these are also harder to get hold of although ive now been able to get hold of some, and the guides are NLA just so you know.
Before the head went off i stripped it and steam cleaned it, heres the pics.
And whats all this got to do with todays up date?
When i sorted the stem seals it was only a tenner more for a Victor rymes ( eom) head gasket set than bmw wanted for just 16 stem seals and i thought that the other gaskets would probly come in handy at some point, like today, so i orderd one.
I orederd the gasket set thursday and was told it would be here today for me to pickup from parkside bmw.
So woke up early on my day off and started to do the timeing case gasket which has leaked ever since i got the car but has started to get worse of late, thought i'd be able to get to the gasket without taking the thermostat housing off but snapped one of the heads off the case bolts in the removal process and it turns out i wouldn't have been able to change the gasket anyway with the housing on.
so a simple job turns in to a major one, draind the coolent and removed the housing, removed the timing case cover which wasnt realy down to the gasket and was sitting proud of the rest of the head at the top( the holes are slotted so it does move during installation) this means the cam cover/gasket was sitting on a small step, removed the snapped bolt stud with mole grips.
It is actuly quite clean in there although the phones flash has made it look abit more orangey than it is.
next stuffed half a roll of kitchen paper down the timing case hole to stop sh1t going down when i cleaned the gasket surfaces (yes i made sure i got it all out again

) also borrowed the hoover to catch the crap thas had got in the little gaps.
You can see from the cleaned timing case were the oil had soaked in to the crap on the cover and stopped it from corroding
theres a diagnol line from between the top and 2nd hole on the left hand side to the bottom hole on the right hand side
So with everything cleaned ready to be re assembled rang parkside, no gasket set, ECP/GSF have no 6mm stem seal gasket sets in stock at any store. so its been reordered from some were else for tomorrow.
Moral of the story, never ever do a "small job" when you know you need your car the next day, or when its going 100miles to get remapped on friday, i should no better
Also got this made at the weekend for my run down to emerald as the cars abit hard to drive as you cant use light throttle openings to much or the AFR leans out, its ok on WOT though
