After watching my car's engine come apart and put back together again, I can breathe easy again. I had the timing belt replaced, MLS head gasket installed, PT cruiser rockers / lash adj installed, converted to ARP studs, and I had the head milled 0.020". Everything works great except something is rattling or sqeaking near the firewall and it gets very annoying.

The differences in the rockers and lash adj. are very cool. The rockers have a little guide for the top of the valve stem to sit and the lash adj. have a hole in the top. It was neat comparing my old ones side by side. I had 60,900 miles on the engine, and my oringinal HG was fine. But now I have the MLS one for leak proof insurance. My mechanic said that the timing belt tensioner was in good condition and I did not need to buy another one so he reused it. I suppose this is ok. I noticed that the 6 center studs do not quite sit flush with the top of the nuts. It looks as if the studs were a little short. They are torqued to 71 ft/lbs and seem to hold fine, so next time it looks like I will need a little longer stud for the centers. The four corner ones fit great, used two washers and still had some of the stud sticking up past the nut. Do you think I could change the 6 center studs without removing the head, timing belt, etc? They are hex keyed on top.

Now when I brought my head to the machine shop I originally wanted to take 0.035" off. There was no way that could be done unless I shaved into the valve seats. I do not understand how some people go further. Are the 1mm valves thinner allowing the seats to be shaved into? The most he could take off was 0.020" and even with that the edge of the valve now sticks a little higher that the bottom of the head. I guess my new compression ratio is somewhere around 10:1. The car seems a little more peppy and I am happy.

-Jared
96 GS <--- ready for another grueling 60,000 miles... with turbo in site.
Melbourne, FL

Iceman CAI | RS*R Cat-Back | AFX Pully | Milled Head 10:1 CR | MP 60mm TB