Leigh

Another update!
The engine was removed and stripped today, and the heads were sent for skimming (just 3 thou)to be returned tomorrow.
The good news is the warranty is paying £876 towards the repair...
However... the gaskets look fine (gulp!) and, as far as you can tell with the naked eye, there is no obvious sign of head gasket trouble either in or around the bores. (double gulp! )
All the pistons are the same colour, as are the valve heads. They all have a light brown/orangey tinge to them, apparently thats from the Millers octane boost I use. The piston crowns are pretty coked up, but on a happier note, there is no evidence of detting at any time and there is little or no wear to the bores, in fact you can still see the original machining marks on them.
There is a quite a lot of 'goo', for want of a better word, in the oil breather pipe, not sure what this is indicative of?

On inspection, the water pump looks fine, so I'm not *very* optimistic that the car will be cured when it is reassembled!

While the engine is out, I'm having an AP Formula clutch fitted, as the old one was biting quite high, and was juddering. The flywheel looks VERY tired, with some blueing to it and some little hairline cracks as well. It would appear that the little oriental chap who owned it before me liked to get away from the lights quickly!

Fingers crossed for next tuesday or wednesday when I'll hopefully have the car back! Then we'll see if Scoobyboy WAS right!

Cheers for now
Leigh

[This message has been edited by Leigh (edited 10 August 2001).]

Leigh

Just got off the phone to Olly Clark, the good news is, the people machining the heads have said they were pretty bad, so have had to machine 5 thou off them to get them flat, so HOPEFULLY we may have found the source of my cooling probs. The bad news is I need a new flywheel and that's going to cost another £250! Costs are getting dangerously close to £2k now! *gulp* ...The wife's gonna kill me!

ChristianR

iTrader: (1)

Mine is still doing its over-heating thing, so keep me posted!!!

Remember,I changed the thermostate.. but that didn't solve the problem.

if it is a headgascot? surely cheaper to upgrade? can u get cosworth ones or something??
and why not have the flywheel shortened? get some extra bhp

scoobyboy

it will work always has done for me!

Leigh

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by scoobyboy:
<B>it will work always has done for me! [/quote]

Thanks for the vote of confidence mate, and also thanks for the advice, I *really* hope you're right!

Christian,
I'll keep updating this thread as and when I hear something from the garage, hopefully this thread will be of use to anyone with similar problems. I've seen a few posts on here recently from people with water coming out of the overflow, and that's pretty much how mine started.
Not sure about the availability of uprated gaskets, mine is only holding 12psi of boost, so hopefully standard ones will be up to the job!
I'm certainly learning my way round a scoob engine now, previously, I thought a scoob engine bay looked more like the inside of a Zanussi washing machine!



[This message has been edited by Leigh (edited 10 August 2001).]

Leigh

oops! double post!


[This message has been edited by Leigh (edited 10 August 2001).]