Quick sanity check... Coolant Loss/Head Gasket

[rubjonny]

Water is a natural by-product of combustion, if there was a water leak into one of the bores I would expect the coolant system to be over-pressurised and very dirty.  After all engine compression is higher than coolant pressure
Another thing you could try, get an uber bright torch and shine it down all 4 sparky holes, if one piston looks cleaner than the rest its a good sign that you have a hg failure.
The fact you say its worse when town driving rather than motorway driving does suggest to me you just have a coolant leak somewhere, and havent found it yet!  One of my heater matrix hoses wasn't tight enough, this caused my coolant to drop but it took me ages to track it down.

Having said all that it could still be hg failure

edit: head gasket swap isnt all that difficult tbh, canb be done in a day.  trouble is you want to get your head skimmed really, they don't tend to just blow for no reason!

[Conker]

I'm bound to be doing this pointlessly, I'll prob find a split hose costing 10p or something next week.    Oh well, I've got far too much skin on my knuckles anyway.

Into the breech...

[rombonie]

Have fun, as mentioned, it's a doddle to do

I'm sure you'll let us know how many knuckles you manage to remove

[Conker]

Update on progress...

Well the head is now attached to the bottom end by just one effing bolt - The tricky central bolt under the exhaust manifold. Whoever thought of putting one there and not leaving enough room around it for a socket needs shooting (i.e. I can get a ratchet up there but there isn't enough room around the bolt to get a socket on it)   

I can get a spanner on it but it was starting to slip, so I've left it for now. I was thinking of buying a ring spanner, as presumably they are less prone to rounding bolts??

To start with I was going to take out the head with the downpipe attached but it won't clear the brake lines/anti roll bar above the driveshafts. Switched to plan B and took off the exhaust manifold as surprisingly the little blobs of brown rust that were formerly "bolts" seemed to want to come off (nice surprise). Oddly three of the studs screwed out rather than the bolt 

I'll try again tomorrow.

[Khare]

be careful not to hydrolock your engine.

[Conker]

Just got the head off... Well chuffed!!   

Anyhoo, here's a pic of my head gasket still on the bottom end. Are there any signs/symptoms visible on the pic that show head gasket failure?? I don't know if thats possible or not. I was expecting to see a crack or something like that 

[Horney]

It does look a bit knacked along the back part, but from that pic it doesn't look blown to me. As the head's off give it a good clean up with Mr Muscle oven cleaner and check for cracks.

Nick

[rubjonny]

dont forget to have a look on the bottom as well
cant see anything that leaps out at me, bit of black on #1 and #4, but that could just be oil...

[Conker]

Cheers guys.

The bottom of the gasket is even crustier, with very large lumps of crud around the channel holes, but there isn't any obvious cracks. While the head is off I'm going to do stem seals etc. so even if the head gasket was "okay", it isn't a completely wasted job. I would guess its the original gasket, so it doesn't hurt being changed anyway, plus there may be a hairline crack I can't see.

Can't wait to get it running again!


PS   As an aside, I found the crankcase breather was full to the brim of mayo! This might have been adding to the smoke coming out the exhaust.

[Horney]

It's worth checking th eoil cooler as these are know to fail causig oil and water to mix.

Nick