Re-tourque head bolts..

[woodisgood]

I am leaking oil from between my head and block, not burning oil, not getting water in the oil. I am planning to pull the valve cover gasket and re-torque or change the head bolts. I have talked to a couple different people and have gotten different answers on how to do this.

1. Crack bolts one at a time and re-torque.
2. Crack all the bolts and re-torque according to the sequence in the bentley.
3. In case of changing bolts...one at a time or all at once?

[blueapplesoda]

Are you sure it is coming from the headgasket? Hopefully your cylinder head is not warped so bad as to leak like that...

If you are using stock bolts...do not untorque them, just check the torque. They are torque to yield, aka. one-time use, once they are removed they are basically garbage.

If you have to change the bolts, do them one at a time. Untorque, remove, insert new bolt with threads lubed and torque.

[nando]

unless you have the old hex head bolts (that should be replaced), you cannot retorque them. Unless they were never torqued to begin with, TTY bolts when torqued properly are on the flat part of their yield curve. What this means is turning them further will not increase clamping force. But it does have the potential to break the bolts..

you could replace them one at a time, using the same sequence as if you were doing a set.

[jlevie]

You can change the bolts, but as previously stated they can't be re-torqued. However, the chances of success for this are pretty low. The odds are that you won't fix this w/o replacing the gasket and probably having the head decked.

[nando]

I agree that the chance of success is low, but it could be worth a shot. Headbolt sets are pretty cheap - around $20.

[woodisgood]

Thanks guys, It was a long time BMW mechanic who suggested to me that I could re-torque my old bolts...I am gonna go ahead and order new ones.

[matt0300]

Ur heads warped bro

[woodisgood]

This motor has not been overheated while in my possession, oil leak has gotten slowly worse over two years....what would have warped my head?

[jlevie]

This motor has not been overheated while in my possession, oil leak has gotten slowly worse over two years....what would have warped my head?

Time and heat cycles.

[woodisgood]

Time and heat cycles.

Shit. Still gonna try the simplest thing first and replace the bolts. I have a spare head if need be.

[matt0300]

It could have warped when u removed the old head bolts. Did u take them off in the right order and slow?

[woodisgood]

I have not removed any head bolts yet...this motor is still intact, I am opening it up tomorrow.
It is at my buddies garage so it will be stone cold when we start.

[woodisgood]

So, this slowed the leak considerably but did not stop it all the way. I think I can live with it till I have time to fix it right.

I performed #2 .

[erik325i]

I performed #2 .

So you asked for our opinion, and went against what everyone said?

[CHIF8008]

the threads on head bolts stretch when torque'd down. you CANNOT re-use them.

i guess technically you could, but it will most likely result in a poor'r running engine and possible internal damage.