Hello all,
Bit of an intro for those interested... Skip to to the next paragraph if not. Last February I acquired an 87 Suzuki Samurai with a Jetta Eco turbo diesel swapped in. Millage and year unknown, but it started right up from cold in 10*F weather and ran great so I wasn't too concerned. Fast forward to this winter I'm doing a lot of work to the car, and while I have the engine out I decided to freshen it up a bit. The motor had a bit of a hot start issue (needed glow plugs if left sitting for more than 30 seconds), and had developed a habit of blowing huge clouds of white smoke on cold starts for the first minute or two. I figured this was a glow plug and/or injector problem, but seeing as the motor was out and I can't seem to leave things alone I also set about fixing a number of minor oil leaks and repainting the engine. The plan was to not open up the internals... About an hour into this endeavor I was done taking the injectors out, one was very tough which I used some heat and oil on to help out. Two were stiff, but penetrating oil did the trick. The last one was torqued down seemingly as it should be, but once loosened a quarter turn was suspiciously easy to unthread. Then I saw the crack in that injector mounting boss in the head, oh great. I was pushing towards the engine, and as I mentioned used by far the least force to loosen this injector compared to the others which didn't crack. No carbon buildup in the injector seat so I can't imagine it was cracked like this before as I'd think it'd come loose, but I'm equally as confused as to how I would have cracked this boss but not the others. Possibly some kind of micro fracture was already there and this was the last straw? Either way, I did a compression test (low 400's in all four, so good news) and was now into pulling the head to try to have it TIG welded back together. Headgasket was good, all of the valve train was good minus one broken valve seal, but much to my dismay the inside of the head was not as peachy. All four pre-chambers were cracked, albeit small hairline fractures and the common cracks between valves, one of which was very close to the Bently spec for maximum allowable size. After much deliberation, I decided to go ahead and order a new cylinder head. I'm a student and really wanted this motor back together before I left as I wont see it again until May. Getting a new head should have sped things up and given me some peace of mind as I plan to drive this car far of into the middle of nowhere for years and years to come. Not to mention every link or lead towards getting new pre-cups seems to be a dead end. Unfortunately the choice for new heads also seemed limited. Less than stellar reviews on any heads but OEM and KolbenSchmidt lead me down that route. Ebay was lacking an heads which looked worth rebuilding, and I was only able to find one place offering new mechanical KS heads who shall remain anonymous for now. I needed a hydraulic head, so I called them up asked if they had a new German made KS version of the hydraulic head and they said yes. Price seemed low but I wasn't going to complain. A week later and it has arrived, but not as I had hoped.
So I asked for a new hydraulic Kolbenschmidt head for my Jetta ECO turbo diesel, specifically confirming that it had new valves, seats, pre-chambers, etc. What I got was a rebuilt KS head with all used components and several defects. I've attached photo so of the issues. First thing was a large gouge in the valve cover gasket sealing surface, would need to be filled for any chance of sealing. Second was sand and metal shavings inside all the coolant passages. Then to make things even worse, all four pre-chambers were cracked worse than my old ones, all four valves had cracks between them, and there was one pre-chamber with a crack starting between it and one of the valves. A few of the valves are also deeply pitted/eroded. Still serviceable, but certainly well used already. Furthermore the whole thing looks like it was resurfaced on a disc sander, with pre-cups in, that may I mention are 32mm with no stamped mark whereas my old ones were 30mm with the mark typical of turbo cups. My understanding is this makes little difference, but its not what I thought I was getting.
I've tried looking up the numbers on the head in the KS catalog with no luck, but the head has "made in W. Germany" cast into it and "KS" stamped on the end which I presume is KolbenSchmidt. I did however see that none but the GTD valves are sodium filled in the KS catalog, so I'm not sure if this head has those or not. It says they use a austenitic CrSi alloy, which I don't believe exceeds the sodium valves performance but I could be wrong. Either way, I'd like to at least know so I can monitor EGT accordingly.
So in my mind this should definitely be sent back, and I'll be calling the seller tomorrow to see what they have to say about this... The cracks in the pre-chambers have me most worried, but the rest seems livable though not even close to what I was expecting. Am I worrying too much here? As it sits, this new head is certainly better than my old one. I've tried to research what all these parts should or shouldn't look like but most of the relevant pictures posted on forums are no longer showing up thanks to photobucket. Please take a look and let me know what you think, or point me in the direction of some working reference material! If everything is par for the course I'd really like to get this motor back together and sealed up, but if this rebuild is as poor as it seems to me I'll wait until I can do it correctly. In which case, I'd need some more help on either locating a good new/rebuilt head or new pre-cups for my head.
Thanks in advance!