Hey everyone, so I'm a dumb ***, I just replaced the head gasket in my 05 civic si with D17A2. I did oil the threads on the head bolts but because I'm an idiot I didn't oil the washers or the head of the bolts so when I torqued them down I made it to the 2nd pass of 36 ft lbs ok but when doing the 3rd pass of 49 ft lbs all but 1-2 bolts was already supposedly torqued to 49 ft lbs. My question is will this be ok? Or should I back them off in sequence, oil them and re torque them? If I do that should I replace the head gasket again? Sorry if this has been asked a bunch of times before, I only found one thread where someone mentioned that they knew someone who did this before and they left it and didn't have any issues.
thanks for any advise.

 

I will also mention that I did intend to leave it and hope for the best and put the car back together but then the crank seal I replaced was leaking for some reason so I tore it all apart again to replace that seal again. The more I think about those head bolts the more it bugs me and if I'm going to re do it I should do it now while it's apart. Also I did have the car running about 4-5 times for 3-4 seconds each time cause the connect from header to exhaust pipe was leaking and I just started it up enough to hear if it was leaking, not sure if that would of affected the HG at all if I re do the head bolts. Thats all the info I can think of, does anyone have any thoughts on how I should proceed. Thank you!

 

Does anyone have any input on my situation?

 

Well You can assemble everything and start her up and do a compression and leak down test to see if the head gasket leaks. I think as long as the final torque spec was achieved you should be ok.

Unless they are ARP head studs I wouldn't back them off and then re torque them. Some people will say they are ok to re use and some will argue the OEM head bolts should be replaced when removed.

Worse case if it leaks pull the head and replace with a new head gasket and spend some extra $ on ARP studs.

 

start the engine heat them up. next day i would retourqe the bolts, on an cold engine. oil should be everywhere

 

Redo them 100%. I normally only use ARP lube when I torque mine

 

If you haven't started the engine yet, you are free to redo them at will. I actually will pull one out, re-oil and re-torque down to final torque spec in 2 or 3 steps and move onto the next one and do the same. Usually following the sequence. Then again I back them out as it happens so I am in the sequence at whatever torque step I've made it to.

I do this when the oil doesn't take and the bolt squeaks or pops on a step (usually final step). I back it out, re-oil and put in and torque it in steps to whatever step torque I'm at.

Once you've started the car and heat cycled the head gasket, you really should not loosen the bolts at all as the head gasket cannot or should not be re-used at this point. Even 4 or 5 seconds puts a lot of heat into the head gasket and head. The head heats up first before the block. I do not know if that would be considered heat cycled or not but it is suspect.

 

Update: thanks everyone for the great info, I ended up pulling all the bolts and re oiled them and torqued them back down without issues, now that my car is back together it runs great, it passed a leakdown test and compression is still 180's across the board, so everything is fixed, atleast for now. Thanks again!