HaHa ok If it's bad could you email or pm the sequence? Unless it's just the torque and then angle listed in the specifications on here, right?

Yea, for the stretch it's just a low torque, then angle.
Have you got something sorted to do the angle with yet?
There is also a pattern to follow, Give me a link to the one on here and I will have a look at it

Stretch bolts ordered for my steel gasket. So yeah that's what I 'd like to follow. Here's the sequence for a classic truck on here. We followed this sequence today in reverse and in 3 stages to get the head off. Starting with just breaking each bolt, then a few turns to loosen, then removing. I got a degree dial for my torque wrench so that should do just fine.

That's the one to use.
Would suggest to do the 29nM part twice as you might find the first few bolts are loose after the first time

Right ok cool. Any idea when washers etc will arrive? Not starting it until saturday mind.

tuesday or wed i expect

That's brill thanks

After all this, I've tightened to the 120degree angle but I don't like it as a method. It's very easy to be a degree out as you have to be so delicate with the gauge arm, and you can't double check the torque of each bolt because you don't know what the torque is! So, Treeboa, billymadbiker, anyone that knows.......... should I double check it by way of a torque setting? And if so what is that torque setting?

Yoda, if you have followed the settings it will be close enough, no need to use a torque bar, Ive done 1000s using this method with no problems.

PS I dont like it either & agree that they should just give a bloody torque setting. Buy hey ho life goes on

i dont think there is a torque setting that matches the angles tbh

one thing i have read and kept as a note was

`local dealer gave me a print out of 60NM then 125NM `--- reff head torque

For what it's worth I set my torque gauge at 120NM by pure chance. I was JUST trying to stop it from clicking out before I got to my 120degrees. By pure random chance my torque setting must be very close as some of the bolts clicked and some didn't. As that figure married with the initial 120degrees I'm very tempted to just double check everything to clicking point with my already set wrench. The fact that some clicked and some didn't just shows that they aren't even at the moment. Not surprising when the initial 29Nm had to be torqued up 3 times before the bolts seemed to stay put.

You can not 'check' it with a torque setting.
The whole point with using the 'angle' sequence is to eliminate the errors introduced with 'torque' anyway.

I also expect that anything inbetween 110-130 deg is going to be a lot more precise than your torque wrench.
We have some pretty decent tools here and spend a lot of money looking after them. even the best torque wrenches are only calibrated to 2.5% tolerance at best and are usually only within 5% when they are re-calabrated.

The important part is to get an even clamp over the head, the angle method takes all the bolts past the stretch point. that way, every bolt exerts the same force on the head.
After going past this stretch point making a bolt any 'tighter' will not give any more force, it will just over stretch the bolt.
if you used torque only you could not be sure all bolts had stretched by the same amount as it would vary depending on how clean each hole/thread was, how the bolts were lubed, if the washers were new and so on..

as billy is saying a torque setting relies on everything being equal, a tight thread chucks it out the window, as does a drier contact area, add to that the calibration allowances on them and soon you come to realise that torque settings are `old hat`not quite heads but torpedo tube flanges, when i worked in that industry we did not torque the bolts, we tightened by angle on pre set sequences untill we reached a set stretch length, i know you cant do this as unlike the tubes using nuts and bolts your tightening into a blind hole, but if the navy threw out torque setting which would have been easier to do then they will have had a bloody good reason

To be honest at the moment I'm wondering if I should take the head back off. I'm not even sure I was given stretch bolts. I ordered stretch bolts from Milners after the convo with Billy on this thread but after they came they appeared almost identical to standard ones which came with the head. They didn't fit the description that Billy gave me for stretch bolts at all. After torquing it down today I gotta be honest it just didn't feel right. Some were fairly hard to get up to 120degrees, as you would expect. Others, several, got to 120degrees with so little effort it was scary. So, in my haste / preumtiousness maybe and before I read your latest replies, I torqued them all up to the same 120NM that - by pure coincidence - several of them had clicked at when they also got to 120degrees.

So yeah, I'm a bit messed up I think. Not sure that I have stretch bolts in. And not sure that I have done it right at all.

What's more, my alignment on the bottom end appears to be out slightly, goodness knows how - although the forward piston was flush with the block - so if I have to rotate the bottom half into alignment then I need the head off again anyway!

Right, So have you done both 120deg AND 120NM??

Also, don't panic about the timing marks, 50% of the time the marks are out anyway.
The best way to do it is to check the mark when piston 1 is at top dead center, you can do this with a bit of cable in a injector hole rather than take the head off) If you find the mark is out a tooth or two just make a new mark with paint. I have taken the oil pump lug off and used paint quite a few times as the marks are a little out.

Also, You would not need the head off anyway. With the rocker shaft/rockers removed all valves will be closed so you are free to rotate the bottom end of the engine 360 if you like.

Ah great point. So for the timing at least the head does not need to come off. As I said piston number one was flush with the block so that is therefore ok and my bottom end alignment is fine?

And yes i have done both 120degrees and 120NM. Let me explain how that transpired so it makes sense. I set the torque wrench to a setting I hoped would be enough to stop the wrench from clicking out before 120degrees. I didn't really look what setting that was. I just wound the wrench up. Therefore to my mind using it as a large ratchet handle. BUT.... the first 3 bolts clicked the torque wrench at 120degrees. I kid you not. The first time it happened I looked at the wrench and saw it was reading 120NM. A striking coincidence I thought, that not only did the wrench click out at 120degrees but that also happened to be 120NM. Never mind I thought, we're going to 120degrees and that's all that matters. It was only when several bolts did not click at 120 degrees and it was also very easy to get them there that I became concerned. So I finished the sequence anyway then made my post here. After that I reasoned that by pure chance I had proven that 120 degrees is also 120NM. Thinking I had found the torque that 120degrees represented I then torqued them all up in the same correct sequence to 120NM. Make sense? Sorry.......

Unless you are sure that nothing has moved then (unless you checked and marked otherwise) I would just turn the crank back to the correct place with the rocker shaft off

Nope. Does not make any sense to me.

Do you have a torque wrencg that also does angle (like a snap-on digital one with a grey handle?) or are you using both a torque wrench for NM and a dial type gauge for angle (degrees)

No I don't. It's a standard Halfords proffessional torque wrench. Ok short version.... forgetting the reasons why. what's happened is I have done 120degrees on everything. Then done 120NM on everything, for which some rotated further and some didn't.

Just been talking to a good friend, I believe I know where I went wrong now. and if he is right then I have to have the head off again and try again with new bolts and gasket. Ah the trials of learning to do your own work...................

go on explain what you have muffed up on

Well I did above. But possibly I make no sense. I'll try again in a more simple way. First 3 bolts went to 120degrees. After that they seemed too easy to tighten up. I've just been told: "of course the ones after the first few are 'easy', you've just pushed the head down" Hence. when I torqued them all up further I have in theory stretched the bolts. The reason I felt confident, albeit it wrongly so to tighten beyond 120degrees is explained by the huge coincidence above.

It's quite hard to explain how this all happened. You had to be there to understand my train of thought I think.

i would argue that thought to be honest, your on a metal gasket that does not really crush down, you did take it down in three stages ?? first torqued then the two stages of angle tightening

As just said, The first 'torque only' stage is to evenly compress the gasket.
I think your 120NM coincidence is actually false and has not even happened.

I expect what has happend is that you have done the angle tighten and that has taken the bolts BEYOND 120 NM
So - the angle tighten may have taken the bolts to 150 nm or some other number.

You have then put your torque wrench on it. If the wrench has clicked at 120nm then you must have set it to 120nm yes??

So, if the bolts were all ready at 150nm then the wrench would just click at 120nm and not actually do anything else like turn the bolt

Mike...... I did the angle in one stage. 29nm initial torque, then straight to 120degrees. That's what the manual says no?

Billy............ how is it possible that the first 3 bolt in the angle stage clicked at 120NM AND 120 degrees? Ie, it hit 120degrees, it clicked, I looked at the wrench and it was 120NM. I then did bolts 2 and 3 and exactly the same thing happened. I see your point but that implies the wrench was set higher than 120NM for the angle stage. But it was set AT 120NM for the angle stage. This was what lead me to think I could tighten ALL of them to 120NM after doing the angles. And my friends theory about the head compressing down certainly explains why in my head I thought the subsequent bolts were not tight enough.

and btw.......after doing the angle stage most of the bolts DID TURN when I torqued to 120NM. Ergo.....they could not have been at 150NM or so?