Spent much of the morning fitting the replacement oil pressure gauge (kindly supplied by Ruairidh) to the RP. Took the little car up to Llanuwchlyn (at the other end of the lake) to get animal food and brought it back down the A494 to Bala. All good, although the gauge appears to read a bit 'slow' compared with the old one. I am sure that I am pulling more that 1 lb sq in at 30 mph hot. the old gauge would read between 2 and 3 at that speed. However, I don't suppose that it has been fitted to a car for quite some time, so I shall run it for a bit and see if it 'comes to itself'.
Joined the Sheffield group run in Anne's Ruby. It rained on and off for most of the time before the lunch destination, but on the way home it poured down. I then remembered that the splendidly working and effective pull-and-spin wiper (thank you Dave Mann) had an intermediate wipe fitted - hand operation.
Today I opened up the garage to find a small pool of water under the tail of the exhaust pipe. Where had that come from I wondered.
Cylinder head off and the source of the water was apparent! It could have been coming through the gasket from one of the water passageways between head and block, possibly up one of the cylinder head studs or even through a manifold stud. I’ve put Loctite around the rear cylinder head studs and checked and sealed all the manifold studs.
I did try cleaning and replacing the head gasket, but as well as this not working (water present in the combustion chamber again), I managed to pull out the centre cylinder head stud (already a stepped stud)
So I’m waiting for a new head gasket to arrive!
The engine was rebuilt 500 miles ago and had run quite well apart from some overheating problems due to what I thought was a clogged radiator. It may be that the water leak was the cause of overheating or that the radiator flush I used may have done too good a job!
11 hours ago(This post was last modified: 11 hours ago by Steve Jones.)
After the engine was re-built, how many times did you check the torque on the head studs? After running, it can take 3, 4, 5 or maybe even 6 times before the head is, finally, down. Do it cold if an alloy head. Some people scoff at those of us who use a torque wrench for this job. If you want a fit and forget, it's the only, reliable, way although it will detect a stud thread that is failing but that's something you need to know about anyway. Also, that head gasket looks a very poor fit around the bores.
I’m a bit paranoid about checking head torque. In fact I bought a smaller torque wrench to ensure it was reading in the more accurate mid range. I have checked about once a week over the last six months. So I’m pretty sure that the studs were tight. In the photo the gasket is loose on the head and resting half way up the studs so it might appear a bad fit.
I think my use of the rad flush must have something to do with the leak. Up until then things were fine.
It’s a new Ricardo head, photo below and for good measure a photo of the block. The waterways are full of water up to the surface. (I was checking to see if any leaked through the manifold studs but there has been no drop in level for the last four hours).
