1972 220 cylinder head removal! help

There are 10 head bolts, 6 for the cam towers and in between 4 for the valve cover brackets. These bolts have a 10 mm hex socket head. There are 4 screws, two in the camshaft well and two by the distributor, one of which holds down the distributor which should be removed. These have a

When you get them all, try tapping the head on the side with a rubber mallet or dead blow hammer. It has been on there a while and might be kind of stuck. A little gentle persuasion won't hurt.

well, all the screws you've mentioned have been removed. still no budge! i tried the rubber mallet on the side, gentle persuasion, which became animated and less gentle, but the old thing remains stubornly stuck.

i'll beat it some more, and see what comes of it.

Do actually expect a cylinderhead that's been in place for 30+ years to just lift off?

It's stuck onto the head gasket and that's, in turn, stuck onto the block. You need to pry it off.

It could also be that someone, in an attempt to avoid replacing the cylinderhead gasket (again), glued everything together with Permatex as he assembled it. One never knows what's been done.

Most mechanics, who once worked on old engines like this one, retired long ago, some of them permanently. There's not a vast knowledge resource base to tap so temper your expectations as to what's available for your old car project. I'd expect your car is older than half this NG's participants.

Bah! You make it sound like some cryptic lost language.

It's just a big old hunk of greasy metal after all...

Any quality machine shop should be able to scrape and rebuild the head for you... Although parts could be tougher depending on what is needed.

You might deal with some blank stares though, depending on who you go to...

Marty

This may be regarded as lateral thinking but how about replacing the spark plugs, camshaft removed, and then turning the engine over using the starter to use the compression to loosen the head. Of course you would need to loosely replace a couple of cylinder head bolts to stop it blowing off !!

Joe

This would be a good idea for an engine whose valves were in its block i.e. '49 Ford flathead V-8. This engine has overhead valves, its timing chain is temporarily hanging loose. All its valves closed after the camshaft was removed so there'd be no risk of pistons hitting valves but the loose chain could wrap onto the crankshaft sprocket.

Not necessary. Usually just tapping around the perimeter of the head will free it. Although this original poster is scaring me a bit, as he seems like to do additional damage with the hammer...

Marty