Cylinder Head Bolt Retorque

[VoyKimmer]

If you (or even if you don't) continue to see what appears to be coolant leakage, I would suggest you re-torque all the cylinder head bolts down. When I did mine when I first got it (13,000 miles) they seemed to be a little loose. The service manual also recommends that be done initially at 500 miles, then about every 6500 miles after that. This is probably something that most do not do, although personally, I think every 6500 miles is a little often, but, the service manual says that to do it that often.

Is retorqueing the cylinder head bolts nessasary? When I purchase my 02 Voyager new and took it to the dealer for the 500 mile check. I was very specific for them to retorque the cyl head bolts. I saw no indications that they did it. They did not even know what the torque was. I believe I got ripped off. What will happen if they are never retorqued? Looking at the service manual. This is a big job that looks like the engine would have to come out to accomplish this task. I also see that the head cover has to come off. Is this possible on the bike?

[Rhinestone Kawboy]

Guess I need to clear this up. I had what I thought was some kind of small leakage when I first got mine. Although you do have to take a cover off to get to all the head bolts, I just re-torqued the ones I could get at to the proper value and hope the others (under the cover) were ok. It must have worked. No leakage was observed and it's been over 65,000 miles and I've had no more problems. I doubt that the shop would do any re-torquing of all the head bolts. If you are not having any problems, I wouldn't worry about it. Maybe it was just the ones that seemed loose to me that was the actual cause of my small seepage, it didn't seep after I done those bolts I could get to. Although I suppose re-torquing some of the bolts isn't the recommended procedure in any case, I done this when I first got mine to stop this seepage, and, in my case it worked.

[VoyKimmer]

Thanks Gary, I won't worry about retorqueing the cylinder head bolts then unless I have a problem.