OM602 Head Gasket Woes Revisited
 

Those of you who are particularly thorough readers of these pages may recall that I had the head gasket on my 92 300D replaced this past summer at 243k miles. It was an extremely frustrating experience, largely because I kept having to bring the car back due to a lot of careless little things. But, when all was said and done, Milo was back on the road and all seemed well.

My son has had the car at college so I haven't seen it much recently. But today I noticed all manner of oily mess on the right side of the engine. After poking around a bit, I suspected the source was in and around the chain tensioner. So I cleaned that area thoroughly, both the tensioner itself and the parts of the head and block directly beneath the tensioner.

Started the engine, tensioner is bone dry, but there's fresh oil coming out at the "lip" of the head where it meets the block."

My questions:

1. Can this be anything other than a leak in the new head gasket?

2. If, as the mechanic claimed, he used all new head bolts and followed the FSM tightening procedure to the letter, how does something like this happen?

3. Any advice? :D

Yes. Doing this :wallbash: too many times gets you a concussion. 100% scientifically proven.

Seriously... could this be a case of a bad part?

Have no idea how common it is to have OEM head gaskets be defective.

Could be that it got damaged in shipping & handling, too... Someone around here had that happen (chad300td?). I think the thing there was that it got folded over in shipping of something... I could see that the same shop gopher who overfilled the oil by 2+ quarts might not have noticed that it was somehow damaged -- especially if he is the one who unpacks stuff like this for the mechanic.

Yep....sounds plausible to me....especially since I do not want to underestimate Igor's capacity for screwing up my car.

My wife suggested I sell the 92 and keep the 190E!

See? You should have listened to us when we told you to keep the 240D! I thought you said you had an emotional attachment to this one?

I guess as long as you or a family member doesn't put diesel in it...:D

Thinking some more, though... I seem to recall the head tightening procedure as being somewhat complicated. Is there a chance that he just tightened something wrong in the front? If he assigned tightening to Gopher, this seems an even better possibility.

Is it possible that the overfilling caused issues in the first place? Since you were already leaking all over the place with it, could it have caused some slight damage that is now becoming worse?

Edit: If I remember correctly, the procedure goes something like: tighten to X, tighten to Y, tighten a 1/4 turn... and there is a pattern that goes with each one of those stages.

I do have an emotional attachment to the 92...not listening to my wife on this one. Not to mention a financial commitment....SINCE the head gasket repair, I've done rust repair, partial paint job, and front brakes....an additional $2000 or so. And I need a new rear muffler!

From what I understand, Gopher played no role in the tightening procedure.

^^See edited post above...^^

Yes, the tightening pattern is quite specific.

To answer all 3 at once ~ Did they test the head to make sure it was flat?
IIRC there is an oil way there some place. I have heard of people putting sealant around it to stop oil leaks.
I would be tentioning the head bolts again & see it that helps.

I inquired about the condition of the head surface and they said it was good....but I don't know how they ascertained that.

Hah, sorry... the bigger change to my post was above the edit line. I wonder if overfilling the oil could have caused any of this?

Oh, and here's a question out of ignorance: how possible is it for the head to warp I the car never overheated?

It's difficult to imagine that overfilling the oil for a brief period of time could have damaged the head gasket.