Head gasket woes
Is it possible that this is something just dead silly? Like maybe the torque wrench got way off calibration?
Always possible.
I worked for a production engine rebuilder and all of a sudden we were losing rod bearings.
I was the warranty manager and one day the boss says we need to hire another engine assembler. And I said WTF??? Did our guy quit??
He says no, he isn’t torquing the rod bolts or he’s not doing it correctly so we are going to let him go.
The week before that we had a meeting about rod bolt torque and I said we need to send all these torque wrench’s out to be calibrated and every work station that needs a torque wrench should have two of them. One to use and a back up so you can send one out for calibration.
They called bullshit and blew it off. And now I was going to have to fire a guy who was really, really good.
I went to my tool box, grabbed my personal torque wrench and went out to the shop to check it against what he was using.
And sure enough, his wrench was like 15 pounds LIGHT or some crazy thing like that.
We started using my wrench while all the shop torque wrench’s went out to be calibrated. And they bought back ups.
I think this is one of those cases where the OP needs to verify everything so it doesn’t happen again.