Head Gasket Replacement

[PeteGLi]

By the way, does a MK1 filler neck fit the MK2, nothing wrong with mine, just I know someone that has one & if it fits I'll buy it as a spare.

No.

[klittle]

Ok thanks, did wonder myself.

Ok head change turned into nightmare today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thought I would put the car into the garage round the corner from my work just to check everything over for my own piece of mind, plus it wouldn't rev over 4K. Now I've used them before & never had any reason to doubt the workmanship, well untill today that is. I got a call from them to come round to see what they had found, to be presented with my car off the ground & the rocker cover off and a borescope down number 1 cylinder. The guy said the timing was out by about 150deg??? instant alarm bells, not possible I thought. Then he showed me what looked like the edges of the pistons with damage on them, but not clear enough to me. The valves had definately not hit the pistons though & it had been purring before, just not revving over 4k. Then I started to look at the timing marks on the cam pulley, more alarm bells, the outside dot had a dab of white on it to show up better & he explained how the computer system they had said that you had to line the outside dot up at 12 O'clock position when No.1 was TDC, YUP more alarm bells ringing. He just couldn't understand why it wouldn't start, luckily he had been tuning it over by hand to ensure nothing was hitting, well so he said. I then pointed out to him that if the timing marks were now all aligned for TDC then why was the exhaust valve on No.1 fully open. I had argued up to this point that he was wrong. At this point his mouth hung open & he went silent. I then proceeded to line up the cam pulley myself to the correct point & proved to him I was correct (oh & to his boss).

I returned home without my car, thanks to fiends next door. The guy called me at 4:30pm to tell me he had put it all back together as instructed by me & it started first time. He has taken it out to test it & it now runs fine with no apparent problems over 4k, I shall collect it tomorrow morning & take him out in car for test run to make sure nothing is damaged. But he assures me he was wrong and there will be no charge for the work done (I should think not) if there is damage look for a major firework display for the NE of Scotland. Not sure where I'll stand on this if there is damage, but it was running fine before it went in to garage & have a few people that can back me up on that at least, just hope it doesn't come to that.

[mark1gls]

The valves will not not hit the pistons as there is just enough room inside the cylinder for the pistons to miss so there should not be any damage to the valves.

[klittle]

Ok thanks for that, I thought the 1.6 had clearance but the 1.8 didn't, but that is good to know :)

I collected the car on Sat morning (no charge from garage) & it is running great now. What ever was wrong & causing the revs to limit at 4K has been cured. I will never know exactly what caused it as the garage just jumped in without noting how things were set up originally. But hey ho I'm happy as I have my go-kart back & can now drive to work & back with my usual smile on my face.

Seriously considering getting Scirocco number 2, nobody warned me they were addictive

Thanks again to everyones input on this thread, it was much appreciated.

[ghost123uk]

Glad to here it is now sorted :)

Just goes to show you re garages = hard to find one you can trust completely !

Ok thanks for that, I thought the 1.6 had clearance but the 1.8 didn't, but that is good to know :)

I also thought the 1.8's were not a "safe" engine when a belt goes or is timed wrongly ? Someone will be along soon to confirm this ;)

[marcus]

Me too, pretty sure my EX 1.8 is an interference engine (the 1.8s have an over-long stroke ie stroke > bore though that in itself doesn't make for interference).

[Tim_R]

EXs are valve safe, in fact I think all the big block 8v motors are as standard.

I found this out by timing up one of my old 8v motors on the wrong marks years ago and wondering why it would turn over but not run.

[Village Idiots]

A short stroke engine is more likely to be interference as the bore will be greater to give the capacity, hence the surface area of the bore is more, so less height above the piston for a given compression ratio. There are, of course, other factors.

[Nate]

don't forget that many "safe" engines will do damage if the head has been skimmed ;)

[marcus]

The compression ratio on the EX is quoted as 10:1, which is pretty high, would have thought that would mean relatively little space above the piston at TDC...

[ghost123uk]

It's odd that a fact like this, that is a pretty basic bit of knowledge on a particular engine (in our case, 1600's, EX's and DX's) is not a well documented fact on a site such as ours !

Almost embarrassing