I just recently had my head and block resurfaced for a rebuild.While surfing online i came across an article that said, if you had your head resurfaced on a 420a ,that you would have problems with the dowel on the firewall side of the block being to long...I really highly doubt this but was just checking with some of you guys to see if you have heard of this before,or if there is any truth to it.

Depends on how much you had taken off, but i've never heard of the dowel being too long.

cool thats kinda what I thought... thanks

Took off .020 with no dowel problems. Neon guy I know took off .040 with no dowel problems.

are you sure what you saw said there was an issue with the dowels?

There are known issues with the hole for the head bolt in that corner to have not been machined deep enough which can result in a leaky HG because your head bolt bottoms out before the head can be torqued to proper specs (although a torque wrench will tell you otherwise due to the bolt bottoming out) This problem is mitigate by using head studs or cutting off a few threads from your head bolt

if you're worried about it, grind it down a bit

Sorry to bump this old thread guys, but I searched and this was the only thing related.

I'm doing a headgasket. Took the head to the shop to be milled and they noticed the passenger dowel was broke in half. They got the one half out of the head, but now I've got the other half that's in the block to try to get out. Sprayed it with some PB and tried to wiggle it with some needlenose and it feels like it's not gonna be moving, not easily anyways. I'm thinking a screw extractor? I know I'll have to be super careful to not fuck up the block surface. Any suggestions? Anyone ever ran into this before?

Last broken one I had, I removed with a pair of vice grips.

I only have this much material to grab onto.....Haha...

Well, 8 bucks for a screw extractor bit ain't doin jack shit. Looks like drilling it is the next and only option. Just another step that is a pain in the ass.

For future search purposes, I was able to get it out. DarkOne suggested that I just shatter it, so I took a big flat head screw driver to it, because I couldn't find my chisel. All the flat head did was push it further down into the block, but movement it what I was looking for, I knew once the "bond" between the block and the dowel was broke, it would come out. So when the dowel moved down into the head about a 1/16th, I grabbed the screw extractor again and worked it right out. Thanks to DarkOne and Ebster. Hope this helps someone in the future.