Head Removal, Our Way

It was late one Friday evening and I had pulled just about everything from the head in preparation for its removal. The only things left attached (I thought) were the intake manifold and the cooling rail. Ryan and his wife Joan had come by for dinner and, as always, Ryan and I had adjourned to the garage. The next day I was going to go and rent an engine hoist to help me pull the head, but Ryan had a suggestion. He reasoned that since the head was all alumin(i)um, it couldn't be that heavy. Why didn't we just lift it off the studs and be done with it? Why not, indeed.

The "why not" is this. From the side or the front of the car, there is no practical way to get any leverage to lift the head. Our first attempts managed to generate about one-half inch of separation between the head and the block. On subsequent attempts we stuffed small blocks of wood in the gap, but this clearly wasn't going to do the job.

Wiping the sweat from our brows, we pondered the situation. It was Ryan who saw the solution. With my full permission, he removed his shoes (he doesn't often wear socks) and climbed up on the fenders, straddling the engine bay. Ryan is a rather "beefy" sort, so from this position he had almost no trouble lifting the head clear. I say "almost" because I forgot to remove the coolant line leading to the heater which is attached at the head/manifold junction. The rubber hoses allowed him to get the head about half-way up before binding. The head gasket also got hung up on the little studs at the front of the head.

With the line removed and the head gasket attended, Ryan easily pulled the head up over the studs. I slid a sheet of cardboard to cover the ends of the studs, and Ryan set the head down. Mission accomplished, sort of. There was still the problem of getting the head off of its perch and onto the floor.

If you want to understand the magnitude of the problem, take a thirty pound weight and hold it out in front of you at arms length for five seconds. It doesn't sound like much, and for the first second or two, it isn't. It's the next three seconds which cause all the difficulty.

I reached what weight-lifters call "failure" after about three and a half seconds. This placed the head directly over the passenger side fender. Fortunately, Ryan brought his side of the head around quickly, and we were able to set the head down in a controlled fashion on a sheet of cardboard.

It would remain in this place for a very long time.

As it turns out, none of this would have been a problem if the front end of the car had not been elevated. Ryan and I later removed the head from his engine (only to find the cracked block) without resorting to such drastic measures.