I bought this bus in the spring of 2009 for the princley sum of 250 quid.
It was on ebay as an mot faliure. The seller didnt mention anything about head gasket problems, but seeing as these suffer so badly with cracked heads i was well prepared for what might occur.
We picked it up from clacton and as soon as i got it on the A12 the temp gauge shot up and it started spewing coolant everywhere.
I limped it home and started pulling it to pieces and found the head was cracked across all four combustion chambers.
I bought a new head for it, then after getting some advice from an estima specialist, i stuck it back on ebay and found a repaired second hand one instead. It seems that the cheap pattern heads that you can buy on ebay are made from sub standard alloy and after a few thousand miles the valve seats start to receed and the valves don't close properly.
I managed to luck out and got a second hand repaired head that had done about 500 miles in a van before getting written off. I stuck it in with a genuine head gasket and cambelt, replaced the water pump and took the rad apart and cleaned out what looked like ten years worth of rad weld.
I got it on the road and mot'd just in time for when we moved house. It came in pretty handy then.
I toyed with the idea of wheels and lowering, and found a set of jeep alloys with off road tyres for not a lot of money. The plan was originally to fit low profiles but i couldnt resist trying them on and i sort of fell in love with the jacked up look.
After that i fell back into a band and lack of time and money meant that modifying cars had to take a back seat. The bus was handy for lugging gear to gigs and it was brilliant in the snow with the four wheel drive, but it cost a fortune to run and it ended up being parked up idle at the workshop for a couple of years after i bought my T5.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and the missus talked me into putting it back on the road and selling the Volvo.
I'm going a slightly different route this time involving airbags and ditching the 4x4.
This is how its looking at the moment.
It was on ebay as an mot faliure. The seller didnt mention anything about head gasket problems, but seeing as these suffer so badly with cracked heads i was well prepared for what might occur.
We picked it up from clacton and as soon as i got it on the A12 the temp gauge shot up and it started spewing coolant everywhere.
I limped it home and started pulling it to pieces and found the head was cracked across all four combustion chambers.
I bought a new head for it, then after getting some advice from an estima specialist, i stuck it back on ebay and found a repaired second hand one instead. It seems that the cheap pattern heads that you can buy on ebay are made from sub standard alloy and after a few thousand miles the valve seats start to receed and the valves don't close properly.
I managed to luck out and got a second hand repaired head that had done about 500 miles in a van before getting written off. I stuck it in with a genuine head gasket and cambelt, replaced the water pump and took the rad apart and cleaned out what looked like ten years worth of rad weld.
I got it on the road and mot'd just in time for when we moved house. It came in pretty handy then.
I toyed with the idea of wheels and lowering, and found a set of jeep alloys with off road tyres for not a lot of money. The plan was originally to fit low profiles but i couldnt resist trying them on and i sort of fell in love with the jacked up look.
After that i fell back into a band and lack of time and money meant that modifying cars had to take a back seat. The bus was handy for lugging gear to gigs and it was brilliant in the snow with the four wheel drive, but it cost a fortune to run and it ended up being parked up idle at the workshop for a couple of years after i bought my T5.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and the missus talked me into putting it back on the road and selling the Volvo.
I'm going a slightly different route this time involving airbags and ditching the 4x4.
This is how its looking at the moment.