Head is off! Finally...now whats wrong?

[Wobba]

Ok! Yay! I took the head off and stuff. My my, what a mess underneath! No obvious blown HG BUUT it could just be shit bolts or it's just old... can you tell me?





Any advice at this stage is welcome as it's all a bit scarey now...how do I clean the pistons etc? The waterways look a bit of a mess as well, and whats went wrong with the HG? The bolts were a mess when I took them out, clearly old old items covered in muck.

[Wobba]

The valves are messy as hell too I think. Quoted £200 for skim and valve clean up.

[Justin..]

make sure you put new headblots in!


erm, looks to have failed on the bottom left hand sideof the picture. and receipts/paperwork to show any head gasket work recently? could have been poor workman ship.

[u33db]

Doesn't look to bad TBH - mine was worse!

Is that a kind of slimey substance on the first piston? Its possible that might just be gunk thats fallen out of the waterway when you pulled the head off...HG looks a bit wet which points to that.

You shouldn't *need* to do a skim if there is no history of over heating...i'm probably no going to mine anyway.

[AndyFielder]

get the water out, WD40 on it all stop it rusting, i would get a knife blade to clean the block flat, i would smear grease on the bores and put each piston in turn to the top, clean that up with wire wool and a scraper/blade, get the carbon off. When you put the piston down the grease will stop the bits gettting into anywere they shouldnt.

Get the sump off check for water, bent conrods etc.

Get the head skimmed. i would get the carbon off the valves etc with wire wool, if it were me i would take them out in a leathe/drill on slow speed and spin a cloth with carb cleaner on it... then get a valve lapping kit and re grid the valves as you put them in ... NUMBER THEM WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OUT.

thats it.. a lot of elbow grease, but disassembling the head isnt too hard if you take it slow with the haynes the first few times you need only pay for the skimming, headbolts and gasket.

Andy

[Wobba]

Hehe, few more weeks work then! Yay.

Heres a pic of the valves...a bit messy :(

[Lunner]

Don't lap them in get the value seats re-cut and valves machined if you wanna do that

[stan]

its always good to lap them in after re-cuts anyway....not all machines are accurate enough to make it not necessary.

make sure you dont get any crap in the oil ways.

[Wobba]

The problem for me here is cost. I have had the car on stands for 5 weeks or so and I cant get time off work to do anything much, except today and I lied, to get the time off.

So far, almost every bolt has been an epic task to get off, or work around, for this reason I diont think anyone has worked seriously on this car in a very long time.

I wil lstart my research on valve maintenance soon, but I simply can't afford to spend ages on it :(

At leadt with the head out I can spend time at night indoors working on it...

[number1]

Mine went in exactly the same place almost, but mine didnt pressurise, just leaked out the back of the block, stop leak got me on for another 6 months until my 2ltr was ready. that head definatley needs a skim, id just give all the valves a good lap in if your on a budget, i use blue tissue roll when cleaning the face up, all this pistons down half way, tissue in on top the pistons and put small bits of tissue in the oilways, just make sure they dont fall in too far so that you cant get em out!, i wouldnt bother pulling the sump off, it's not let go that bad. just drop the oil out and put a new filter on with maybe some engine flush for the first startup

Dave