As an A&P of over 50 years experience, I URGE your non-A&P readers to stay away from cylinder base nuts and don’t go buying cylinder base wrenches to see if things are tight. Mike Busch has a LOT to say about this sort of thing and even he doesn’t fiddle with cylinders. Unless you want to hose up an engine, start a leak (requiring RTV to fix it [kidding]) or otherwise cause issues, keep your mits off those nuts. Leave this to your mechanic. Make sure they have the appropriate tech data for the engine in question, the appropriate wrenches and torque measuring devices and that’s that. After that — as you said — leave it to Faith. And if your mechanic thinks it’s OK to pull more than one cylinder off your engine, find another mechanic. There’s a process to ensure loosening cylinder bases and through bolts doesn’t cause subsequent issues. Bottom line … this is serious business. I have never actually seen an engine problem due to loose cylinder attach hardware but PB is “the” man when it comes to airplane crash analysis so … if he says it happens, then it does.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features/reader-mail/top-letters-and-comments-april-23-2020