Update on Columbia/Mercedes 4000 blown head gasket

[Rawze]

Aside from quality, there are many causes of broken head bolts. Most of the time it is excessive power or cylinder pressures or over-torquing by some moron that is air-gun happy. It is not until all head bolts are torqued exactly the same that they will work in tandem to support the stresses equally. Otherwise, it is very easy for only one to break, then the rest will start failing under the heavier strain.

Excess cylinder pressures can cause it too. Bad injectors, bad programming, attempts to "turn up the hp" incorrectly, detonation problems, excess air intake temps or excess EGR temps into the intake,.. the list goes on.

A lot of shops blame "its a weak design" on things without really investigating why,.. they only complain and make more mistakes and assumptions and blame everything but what is really wrong, then perpetuate this through the spread of bad information. It always burns my arsse when shops tell customers this kind of thing.