Just Changed My Head Gasket

[318tiFatherFigure]

I bought the car with this known problem. It turned out the head was cracked in 8 places - 2 to each of the 4 inner exhaust valves.

This appears to have been caused by the radiator fan switch failing.

Also when tightening down the head the centre 6 bolts when rechecked prior to the next stage were found to be slacker than they should have been. I re-torqued all the bolts to that first stage. The outer 4 had not changed.

The other problem was the idle control valve had jammed. That was released with a small screwdriver and loads of WD-40.

The oil and filter were changed and run for about 30miles then both changed again. Lots of debris collected.

Hope these pointers help someone else.