Suspected blown head gasket - good chance to bling the bay

[Elliot]

Took the 944 out for a thrap the other day after a few days idle.

Got to work and could smell burning but dismissed it as the brakes as i have been cornering hard.

Went to cafe at lunch and when i got there i was smoking. Looked under car and drip......................................drip.................................drip onto the exhaust was causing smoking. Quick check and appears that the gasket may have blown at the rear of the engine but this needs to be confirmed by a good clean and run. I got it home with no reduction in pressure or over heating so dont think its fatal. - was a bit embarrasing at the lights with smoke everywhere.

I am going to take this opportunity to remove the engine, clutch and ancillaries and clean the engine bay completely as this was the only thing about the car that i was concerned with.

I would like to polish the head and cam and inlet manifolds but dont know how so if anybody out there has some or can tell me how to do it that would be great. I am also going to get the slave colour coded to the car.

If anybody has a spare 1988 2.5 L 8V heat gasket that they dont need please let me know and i will gladly compensate you.

Any advice or links for the polishing and blinging of the engine bay would be greatly welcomed. If anybody has already done this but needs to sell the bits then please also let me know

Cheers

 

[tref]

from your description, are you sure it isn't just the cam-box gasket? Failed head gaskets don't usually leak oil to teh outside world without other problems showing, and cam box gasket oil leak is a very common problem. It is also a lot cheaper and easier to fix than a full on head gasket...

Advice? Don't change the head gasket if you don't need to, do your belts at the same time as you will have to adjust them after either job anyway, and save the money for some polish for your engine bay!

Tref.

 

[JamesO]

I agree with Tref, if the leaks at the back of the engine its most likely the cork gaskit at the back of the cam tower or the gaskit between the cam tower and head

 

[sawood12]

Correct me if i'm wrong but leaky head gaskets don't usually display the symptoms of water leaking externally from the engine. I've certainly never heard of this from peoples personal experiences. Symptoms are usually, oil in the water expansion tank, water in the oil sump, inflated water hoses due to pressurisation (though I guess it is possible for a water hose to have split or partially popped off due to pressurisation) and broken starter motors due to water filling the cylinders and causing the starter motor shaft to shear when you start the car. I guess your first job should be to trace the leak and take it from there.

Regarding pro-active replacement of the cylinder head gasket - well generally I agree with what's been said, but then again on a 20yr old, 100k+ mile car you are probably asking a bit too much of the cylinder head gasket if you are still on the cars original, so I have some sympathy with the logic for a pro-active replacement.

As to things to do to tart up your engine bay - well your first port of call if you do go the head gasket replacement route is to replace your expansion bottle/tank to a nice white one rather than the stained yellow it will be.

I also would like to replace all the rubber hoses for nice shiny silicon hoses.

 

[Elliot]

Not sure were you get the impression that water is involved as it is oil leaking. cheers for the advice so far - keep it coming

 

[sawood12]

Ahh, no mention of oil in your original post so the mention of head gasket got me assuming you were talking water. If it's oil then i'd definitely suspect cam tower gasket or something similar as has already been suggested.

 

[will lyons]

I have just had My cam tower gasket replaced after a very small oil leak turned into a big one, Our cars run under 6 bar pressure and when it did fail completley it lost oil pressure and sprayed oil all over the engine bay.

Upon Inspection of the failed gasket it had blown out a piece of about 3cm

The belts were replaced at the same time as they obviously need to be removed to remove the cam box I was lucky in locating the leak as it was right beside the back of the distributor housing.

Polishing the cam box and inlet manifold on the turbo is quite easy if you get a three part detailing brush kit from B&Q after a full degrease use brake cleaner to remove the stuborn bits and the detailing brushes as much as possible.

the final part is achieved by using a scrunchy stainless steel pan scrubber the end result is quite stunning the next part of my bay cleaning is to replace the water expansion tank and the hoses with silicon as previously suggested