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Long story short, I had my head bolts, buckets, and a handful of other bits and pieces replaced at 73K miles by a local indy shop. The top end of the engine looked awesome. Most of the bolts looked ok, though all had some corrosion. A couple seemed to have more, but one ... one looked not great. I guess it would have only taken one.
Interesting thing about this car, it's had two owners before me. One, I know little about, though the maintenance seemed to be all right and at Mercedes. The guy before me, who had it for 39K miles, totally, utterly babied it. It was daily driven and dealer maintained to spec.
How do we know this is really bad corrosion or how much longer its good for?
In short, I (and I think, we) just have no idea. I will say that that one bolt (wish I knew which one it was), is significantly uglier than the other 19. I might really clean the rest up and take some more pics if folks are interested in seeing the variance.
Originally Posted by AMG3.2
Yikes. This is always at the back of my mind. OP - did the shop go bolt by bolt method? Do you mind me asking how much they charged for this?
Thank you!
They did the Mercedes method, dropped the engine (really should have done those motor mounts then ... ) and pulled the heads. Quote was for 20 hours, and they used every one of them. I shopped around pretty hard for the parts as the bolts and buckets vary wildly and when you're multiplying by 20 and 32 respectively, certainly do add up. I also replaced a couple of pulleys, head gaskets (obviously), and some other rings and gaskets, coolant, a few clamps, as well as a few other wear parts. I paid $9.52 per bolt and then $19.97 per upgraded tappet (SLS Hydraulic Valve Tappet, "buckets" as most folks refer to them around here).
This job certainly did add up, but where I own the car and had planned on keeping it for a while, it seemed like short money. A lot shorter than a real engine problem at least.
My bolts were also suspect but I think they just look worse than they really are. Need a surface and/or core metallurgy test really but I wanted peace of mind.
04-03-2016, 08:09 PM
