Blown Head Gasket

Blown Head Gasket Replacement

My Saturday went well after fitting the new alternator and belt, but my Sunday didn't work out well at all.

Went something like this.

So that will be coolant all over the forecourt of the garage, not good, get her home and start stripping it down for investigation.

Second alternator off and the coolant hoses away along with the intercooler pipes it was time to strip off the inlet and exhaust manifolds.

Mustn't forget the thermostat housing and as they are getting quite a rare commodity they have to be treated with respect.

Exhaust manifold coming off now.

Now there's a bit of space, time to get the rockers out.

Rocker box cover off and injector pipes disconnected, pulled the rockers off and out with the head bolts, pop the top and see whats in there.

Oh dear.

Not surprised to find a cylinder full of water but it was far from a welcome sight.

The gasket had rotted out between cylinders 3 and 4, I would say the head is scrap.

Lots of cleaning and scraping to clean up the deck of the block and make it clean and ready for the next step of fitting the new head gasket and another head.

Found me a secondhand head, turns out I had to remove it from the engine myself, not what I had planned but hey ho.

Not in bad shape, nothing a good clean won't solve.

Head laid on the bench and I just couldn't get the third injector out, had to leave it with the seller to get it removed and popped back a few days later to pick it up.

Head finally home for cleaning and inspection.

Uh Oh, valve stem seals at the top of the valves means that the oil was working it's way down, not great and needs to be sorted.

 My goodies were amassing to facilitate the rebuild, Elring head gasket, top end gasket and seal set and a full set of silicone coolant hoses.

One of my best investments, valve spring compressor, couldn't have done it without this.

Injector puller to get my injectors out of my original head, popped straight out, doddle it was.

So the new head had issues, stem seals being one, but the carbon build up on the exhaust valves was horrendous and the worst I've ever seen.

Wire wheel cleaned them up and away we go for cleaning, lapping in a new sealing face and reassembly.

Friday night sat in the kitchen lapping valves, magic.

Now the valves are lapped in it was time to fit new valve stem seals, nothing fancy just a 13mm deep socket and a hammer to knock them on.

All fitted and on to the next bit.

Oiled the valve stems prior to fitting in the guides, fitted the springs and washers and used the valve spring compressor to help fit the securing colletts, great tool and worth every penny.

Head is now fully assembled and ready to go on.

Used a product called Well Seal to coat the head gasket both sides before fitting it and the head bolts went in good and easy, new set of head bolts as I didn't know how many times the others had been used, max 5 times, all torqued down and set with the angle gauge, happy days, injectors fitted with some copper paste and clamps torqued down.

Valve caps fitted with a dab of fresh engine oil, the rocker shaft was fitted and torqued down, the valve lash was set using the rule of 9, main reason for leaving the glow plugs out until the last was to allow the engine to run easily for the valve lash setting.

In my collection of new bit was the blue silicone hose set that I really liked, the originals had perished a little and needed replaced anyway and these were an expensive upgrade but they do look cool.

Brand new Bosch water pump going in too as I didn't want to risk the old one failing me after having gone to so much trouble with the head gasket.

And that's a wrap, all buttoned up and filled with coolant, injector unions fitted and the bleed off pipe banjos got new copper washers, glow plugs in and wires connected, hoo ya, time to start it up and get a test run out of it.

Test run successful and I will admit that I was nervous.

So far I've put close to 1000kms on it and it hasn't missed a beat, although some other things have happened lol.

The alternator was just the start of it......

The Saga From Hell, Started With The Alternator.

Oh it was a glorious sunny day, bimbling around the West Sussex countryside and this whole saga started with the alternator frying itself and overcharging, had to pull over to the side of the A27 and cut the alternator belt to save the rest of the system.

Ordered a new belt and a new alternator and half an hour later it was all done and dusted.

Don't take long to change the alternator, 2 13mm spanners, a 10mm and a 7mm for the wires and a crowbar/pry bar to lever the alternator to set the tension and voila!!!

Off we go again for the jolly out and oh dear, disaster strikes and it was all bad, follow the saga in the next episode lol 😂😂😂

New front Propshaft and transmission fluid

Long rebuild and lots of welding said that things mechanically should be fine now the structure is sound.

Guess again fat boi!!!

I found that there was a bit of vibration from the front end at around 45mph to 55mph 😞😞

I picked up a new wide angle prop shaft and set about getting it fitted.

Fit the new one up, you will see that I have fitted the nuts but as I wound them on one by one it was my effort to pull them all up equally and evenly.

Where as the transfer box end sees the bolt heads held captive against the output flange and only requires the use of a spanner to tighten the nuts on the bolts but the diff input shaft requires at least two spanners or a socket and a spanner to nip them up.

All fitted up and the bolts all nipped up.

Here you can see the old prop shaft, it is a solid bar type that you would ordinarily find on a V8 engined vehicle because this originally came off my old 3.9 V8 Discovery, the solid bar was used as a means of avoiding the catalytic converters but I have moved back to a regular tubular prop shaft.

I figured that I ought change out the transmission fluid as it's been in there a while and I need to do the axles as well but that is for a whole other day lol.

What can I say, it was rank and rancid, badly contaminated with water and emulsified.  How did that happen I wonder?  Well what happened was, when I refitted the front wing with the snorkel on I hadn't noticed that the extended breather had slipped out of the cable clips and had rested in the roof gutter, all that rain that we had has found it's way in there and made a mess.

First thing you must do with any fluid replacement is to remove the filler plug, found on the right hand side of the gearbox half way up, 13mm open ended spanner is perfect.

I found out by surprise that the gearbox was over full when the fluid shot out the filler hole and down the sleeve of my boiler suit.

On the bottom of the box is the big 32mm drain plug with magnet on it and behind the cross member there is the transmission screen filter.

This is the goop in the drain pot.

This is the transmission screen filter as it came out, it was disgusting.

The crap all over it was some sort of varnish or paint.

As it was so rank I decided that I would flush it through a bit and popped the plugs back in and put a litre of oil back in and with the transfer box in neutral I popped it in 4th gear and let it run a while and then drained it through.

Still looked like this, purple-ish but not grey and stinking like before.

So I put the plugs back in and fulled it up, I have a 400 mile round trip to do  and will drain it out and replace it when I get back.

Thanks for looking.

Tidying up some wiring.

As with most modified vehicles, they get additional electrics.

I added a second alternator to give me stand alone power supply to my winch and auxiliary circuits.

Installation of the dual alternator kit can be found here Dual Alternator Fitting

I looked at lots of potential solutions and found a combination relay and fuse box that pretty much fitted my needs exactly.

Very time consuming work to build it all up but very satisfying.

I routed the 35mmsq cable up to a connection box where I split the cables down to the fuse supplies and relays.

Gotta have a legend, can't fault find if you don't have any means of knowing what goes where and what colour wire goes to what supply.

Here it is in the engine bay all fitted up and the cables routed to my liking, very functional and much better than janky old individual relay holders screwed all over with self tapping screws and having to try and remember what it does and where the power feeds come from.

All works as it should and I will no doubt have more to fit as more accessories are fitted over time.

Back seats for the first time in decades

When I bought Rusty back in 2012 we lived in Belgium, it was very common to find 4x4s converted into "lichtevrachtwagen" which translated into English is light commercial vehicle with only the two front seats and a bulkhead behind to segregate the load bay from the cab.

You can just make out the silver of the aluminium bulkhead in the centre of the truck.

Well over a year ago my girlfriend found a seat of back seats for sale on a facebook group, made an offer and off we went to East Sussex to fetch them.

Quick test fit of the first single seat just to get a feel for them.

needless to say, I'm happy.

The seats are ordinarily held down to the floor pan with M6 bolts into captive nuts in the floor itself, these have not had seats fitted and the people who removed the seats just left the bolt holes empty so they ended up rusted out, I ran a thread cleaning tap through them first and when I put bolts in the threads pretty much instantly stripped out.  Hey ho, drill out to 1/4" imperial and then tap them out to M8, job jobbed.

Both seats all fitted up and folded while I fit the seat back catches and the seat belts.

You can see the little black latch box on the side at the C pillar, these both had to be fettled a little to get them to fit after the mammoth rear end rebuild, things were not quite an exact fit and needed 10mm trimmed off the bottom, no drama, that's why we own a grinder lol.

Other side seat belt fitted and just getting the latch box trimmed to fit.

After it was all fitted and ready, it was time to go out on the first day of the new year to go have new years day dinner with mum.

Proper family outing with baby and puppies.

Thanks for looking.