1980 Austin Princess - 18/09 - Welding progress

Ha! I saw the title, expected a gutted Mr Vulgalour and instead you seem almost happy that it happened. I don't know how to react now

Possible that it dumped the coolant, overheated, and then did the HG? They rarely go for no reason at all IME.

Hope you get it all sorted without too much hassle.

What do you do for a living?

Usually the metal fire ring gives out on the H/G then the gasket itself get burnt away and the water enters the combustion chamber then runs past the piston into the oil, oilways tend to be further away from the CC so the waterways are breached first hense water in the oil way more than oil in the water.

I remember my Dolly 1300's head gasket going. Had just finished a run out and had noticed there was air bubbling up into the expansion tank so I knew something was amiss. Was running a bit hotter than usual but not enough to overly concern me.

When I got into town and stopped at the traffic lights a massive cloud of white smoke started pouring from the exhaust to the point where I couldn't see out of the rear window! Reversing into the garage with no visibility due to the cloud of my own creation was quite the challenge!

I was *almost* in Lubenham. Had I been able to keep water in the engine I would definitely have limped to the open day and had AA rescue me from there. Patience is wearing a little thin at the moment though, This job should be done by now with everything cleaned up but I can't afford the extra oil I need and I'm going to have to go to my brother's place rather than fixing it at home because of neighbours being awkward. So it now takes as long as it takes for me to get sorted.

I had bought 4 litres of 10w40 but since I'm going to flush the engine with cheap oil rather than an engine flushing product - mainly because I don't really know the history of maintenance for the engine so I'm going a bit softly-softly with it - I need another 8 litres. Being box-in-sump, I need 6 litres for an oil change rather than 4, just as well I checked in the book rather that just going with what I thought was right from memory.

Progress, of a sort. I've got what I hope is the correct valve spring compressor in the post to me, a suitable quantity of oil, a full gasket set, antifreeze, de-ionised water, torque wrench and all manner of other tools and stuff to sort the engine out. Thankfully, I don't need to use the car this week so I can wait for all my various things to get to me to do all the engine jobs at once.

Entirely by chance we found the source of my minor oil leak on the engine. As my brother came on the drive tonight his headlights swept the front of my car which now sits higher after the suspension pump up and is facing the opposite side to usual. This highlighted the fresh oil on the gearbox end plate and it looks like a couple of nuts are looser than they should be and that the gasket is leaking. What's annoying about that is that I've been under the car and cleaned bits to try and locate the oil leak and consistently failed to find anything conclusive before now.

We'll get the head off, change the valve stem seals and reseal the rocker cover thus eliminating the very minor weep from there. We'll then do the head gasket and after we've drained the first lot of oil we'll get the end plate resealed. Then we'll fix the inevitable exhaust blow at least twice and threaten to set fire to it before calling the job finished.

Oh, and my wheel nuts were posted today too.

I bought a NOS Powertrain gasket set for £15 for use on the HLS. Seems really good quality stuff, certainly nicer than what I removed from the HL.

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Today we fixed the head gasket. I found out that the weird 'Coalite-y' smell I'd get through the vents occasionally was coming from the engine, it was pretty pungent once the head was split from the block and after some thinking about it, Dad reckons it's the same smell as a product called Seal-It (may be spelled differently). So that's another bodge uncovered and rectified. The entire block face was covered in a strange black goop but the head face was lovely and clean and flat as I'd expected it to be.

Speaking of bodges, I'm not sure what monkey had been at the engine before but the rocker cover bolts are dogged up so tight they can't be undone so I couldn't do the valve stem seals without risk of shearing bolts. The headbolts were no better with 9 of the 10 far too tight and one far too loose.

The head gasket had blown between cylinders three and four but also showed signs of blowing across compression. It looks like it blew in a minor way some time ago and it was only recently that it properly failed. This might explain the peculiar cutting out issue I would randomly get and why now some of the strange little noises and driving sensations that I could never pin down have now gone away.



 



We made sure to clear all the water out of the bores and headbolt threads before bolting the engine back together. Casualties of the work were one sheared manifold bolt, one shattered sparkplug and quite a few skinned knuckles. Eventually I'll need to get the bolts for teh manifold replaced as two of them are not in great shape and one seems to have partially stripped the thread in the block. This does mean that the small blow on one corner of the manifold gasket is still there but it's so minor that it doesn't really effect anything. We're probably going to gum things up short term to try and resolve it properly.

After some cleaning and checking of surfaces we had no reason to believe things couldn't just be bolted together so that's what we did. Bit of confusion over the firing order since I had nothing to mark the spark leads with and apart from a comedy backfire-with-flames through the exhaust we got the firing order correct and the car now burbles away quite happily.

Took the car for a quick drive and the first thing was how much more torque was available low down where there was nothing before. I didn't have to go up and down the gearbox as much and the temperature gauge barely got to quarter when normally the run we did would have pushed it to half. Things are quieter and less smelly in the cabin too so I reckon we've cured quite a few niggles that I could never pin down to one thing by doing this job.

Happily, my Lotus wheel nuts arrived today too so I can get the alloys on properly and make sure the rear suspension arms are set correctly as they may be the cause of the strangeness with the rear end settling lower when the car isn't being used.

What, more progress? Yes indeed. Having been able to properly inspect the Lotus wheels and wheelnuts it's now clear why regular sleeve nuts don't work: both the wheel and the nut have a very, very slight taper to the shank. With the proper wheel nuts the alloys went on beautifully well and centre up as you tighten them so I'm delighted. This is at the local air station which is usefully on a slope so I need to get a better picture for you all at some point in the future because it makes my arch gaps look really silly.



However, nothing is ever plain sailing with this car and one of the tyres I'd let the air out of to help me polish up the wheel has come off its bead and won't hold air. I know there is a method of fixing this with fire, but I don't want to do that. Instead, I'll let my trusted local tyre place sort it, but since they closed before I got there today and are, I think, closed on Sunday I'll have to do it Monday. In the meantime, I've got my spare steel sat on one corner until I can tootle over to the tyre place and it's safe enough to be parked on the street that way.



I was already concerned about the tyres on the steels because they're not the best but I'm probably a little more concerned now than I was because a lot of the little bits of noise and jiggles and random things you experience only really as a driver have disappeared with the Lotus wheels on even though one is still a not-Lotus. I'd say the tyres on the steels are probably completely jiggered.

I'm on the lookout for a spare matching alloy should anyone spot or have one. No great rush, but I like to have a matching set and I know the alloy fits in the factory wheel well neatly. Didn't wash the car or reset the suspension arms because it's insanely windy here today, but I will get these things done soon.