how wonderful...

[drewmason]

woke up this morning to my cars battery dead, went to buy a new one.... great, fixed it!

went to the town centre, on the way back oh great i smell oil! temperature gauge starts flashing and shooting up! get home with a pool of sh!tty mayonnaise under my car!

Fan-f**king-tastic!!

how are the head gaskets to change on the 8v gti??

[Bjork]

To make ya feel a bit better I'm a complete novice and I managed to do the head gasket on  my 16v.

Not too bad if you try not to let it daunt you and just get stuck in.

Get a haynes and look up the advice on here, you'll be fine.

[mr self destruct]

Yeah, its pretty easy, just follow the Haynes manual (this is one of those rare times it actually works!).
The hard part is all the stuff you get tempted to do while the head's off, like getting the valve stem guides replaced, checking the head's not warped (and getting it machined if it is), replacing the cam belt, water pump, auxilliary pulleys etc. All the stuff its easier to do while the engine's apart anyway, if you know what I mean.

Oh, and don't drop the splined tool for the head bolts down into the engine like I did! 
Ended up spending a day fishing for it with a magnet on a bit of wire. 

[drewmason]

its ok it looks pretty straight forward, been at it tonight and the heads off except for 4 exhaust nuts and 2 inlet manifold nuts as i cant get to the little f*ers, thinking taking the down pipe off from the manifold whilst up on jacks and do it from under the car, ive found a sh!t load of mayo gunk sh!t in all the water pipes so i guess its got itself into the oil as well? when i took the rocker cover off it all looked clean with no signs of mayo?? might be that i only travelled about a mile since it started to give way? as for skimming it didnt get extremely hot on the temp gauge, about a 3/4 of the gauge, is there an easy way to check if its warped? cheers, Drew

[theclash]

put a straight edge across it. i would get it skimmed if it was mine you dont want to put it back together and have the same problem

[nealey]

I think you may have been a bit hasty in taking the head off, there is a chance it could actually of been the oil cooler at fault and not the headgasket

[drewmason]

hi, im pretty sure it is as the car started misfiring and as i was reversing onto drive it died 3 times?

[Diamond Hell]

Skim the head and get the valve-guides done while it's out, if you're keeping the car.

Do it once and do it right.

[AudiA8Quattro]

Do it once and do it right.

Like he said.

[drewmason]

hi, it would be nice to do that but im a student living on 30 quid a week (including fuel and food) so i dont think its really an option to be honest, i know it would be the right thing to do but its really impossible unless i wanna be off the road for months, thanks for the help, is there any checks i can do whilst the heads off to check the valve guides?
cheers