200Tdi Cylinder head - An epic quest in the search for more power and reliability (Patreon)

You might have seen a while back Rich and I were filming the 90's cylinder head for a vid on YouTube. That hasn't happened yet but you guys get to have a look at what's been going on behind the scenes in what must be the longest time a 200tdi head's been off the engine.

A number of mistakes were made along the way (all by me) including:

- Fitting the valve stem seals before the spring washers (that the springs sit on), meaning all the seals had to be pulled off, the washers put on, and the seals reattached. This chewed them up and we ended up buying new seals.

- I dropped the head on some of the studs whilst taking it off at night in the rain, this meant it had to be skimmed again to get rid of the scratches (facepalm).

- I spent a few hours lapping the original valves in but on further inspection they had a pretty nasty step/ wear mark in them so £60 later we put new ones in. 

- I chose to drill out the small oil hole in the head gasket, this may have led to the oil leak the first time we torqued the head down.

- I chewed up one of the M10 exhaust stud threads in the head so we had 2 helicoils (thread inserts) put in.

Information overload, time for some pics

Lapping: 4 hours spent grinding the new valves into the seats today 

Definitely worth doing as now the new valves have more surface area on the seat to seal against, the main two benefits are higher compression (or less chance of low compression) and better heat transfer between the valve and seat. Important things when the engine's being pushed at 30psi. Although after all this effort I'll be driving it like a granny for a few days at least! 

Hope you like this brief look into what we're doing with the 90's cylinder head! Next vid is in the works and I'm aiming for more than 2 a week.

Cheers