The hg has gone on the wifes car. Its only been on a year. The car ran well for that year and has been to cornwall and all over scotland problem free then bang, on the way home from her work it had a catastrophic failure between cyls 2 and 3. Its a bit strange really for it only to manage 12000 miles then fail. Do you think there's an underlying problem, head doesn't seem warped by my crude examination but I suppose you never know. The hg was changed last year after the timing belt sheared 2 teeth and bent the valves. Any thoughts( apart from sell the car cos I aint exactly flush at the moment) ?

Head should ALWAYS be skimmed when the HG has failed or repeat failure is amost a given unfortunately.

I did the HG myself on my old MK3 Astra took me about 2 weeks, thats two hours a day before work but I made the mistake of not having the head skimmed, because I was in a rush to get it done, it ran, just really rough, obvious lack of compression, had to strip down and rebuild twice for the sake of £40 for a skim and pressure test.
Head looked okay when I took it off but it was out by 6 thou, which is quite a lot for a precision engineered item (so I am told)

What car is it on?

surprise surprise its the brava 1.2 80sx. did it myself last year and has been problem free for over a year, till now. I'm getting the "all our friends have nice cars" accusations from the other half ( admittedly I have a penchant for crap cars, I drive a datsun if thats proof enough) but dont really want to spend too much as the mrs kills cars. Think I'll have the head skimmed and then its one less thing to consider. Dont think I've ever worked so much on one car before but its better than decorating I suppose.

stug said:

Dont think I've ever worked so much on one car before

Click to expand...

I felt the same with my Astra, if you feel confident, why not do it yourself, cut labour costs.