General Head Gasket

[Plug]

Well, people.

Due to the gutless motor (who said they were all like that ) the Plugmobile has been to the garage for a health check. The prognosis isn't good, the head gasket is on its last legs, causing the lumpy idle from a cold start. When it warms up it runs fine (apart from the aforementioned gutlessness) but obviously I don't want to carry on driving it until it goes bang.

But what to do.. the garage reckon anywhere between £200-£400 to fix it, depending on how bad it turns out to be once the head comes off. I'll really find it difficult to justify a £400 bill bearing in mind how much the car's worth, but I think it's too good to scrap.. rust free Pandas with 24,000 miles on the clock being in the same category as rocking horse droppings these days.

So, how big a job is it.. I've never done a head gasket before, my skill with a set of spanners isn't too shabby but I hate working on cars and if it all turns to rats**t half way through I'll probably just get pi**ed off with it and tow it to the crusher..

A very disheartened Plug...

 

[Alan.D]

Doing the head gasket yourself is relatively easy, and relatively inexpensive HOWEVER you will need to figure out what caused the head to go in the first place. Once the head is off it will need skimmed and whilst your at it you may as well change the valve stem oil seals, remove the cam and check the shims for wear, regrind the valve seats etc

 

[oldernowiser]

I'd say it's one of the easiest cylinder heads to do (of the four I've done previously - 903cc Panda and 850 Mini, virtually the same design pushrod engine with lots of messing about setting the valve clearances up again, and two 999 Pandas) There's no need to disturb the valves and camshaft on the 999 Panda, as they remain attached to the head.

The biggest difficulty I had was undoing the head bolt at the centre front as it needed a deep socket which was thinner than anything I had to hand.

The other problems were corroded up nuts/bolts on the exhaust manifold.

Allow time to get the head skimmed to remove any damage.

Use new stretch bolts... it's probably worth doing the water pump and tensioner while you're doing the job, and of course a new timing belt and gasket set.

The last 999 Panda I did took a Sunday afternoon to do, but the first one took most of a day.

 

[Jaff_Fox]

Forgive me for maybe being a bit naive but I might be changing the Gasket on the engine I'm working on but I have no intention of skimming the head. Surely it is only necessary to skim the head if it needs skimming rather than routine.

I certainly know my last panda didn't get skimmed and its still on the go 4 years later.

I plan on spending no more than £40 on my next gasket change including oil so in my eyes that price is completely absurd!

 

[richcinq]

True, you only NEED to skim the head if it is found to be warped but it is good practice to skim the head if the head gasket has blown whether it is warped or not. I did a gasket on my cinq after it went and did not skim the head and its still going 2 years later but now I always get them done.

 

[Alan.D]

Even removing the headbolts can cause slight distorion in the head esp if the removal procedure isn't adheared to so would always advise it.

Although I hate doing headgaskets and would rather change the whole engine with a known good one.

 

[Jaff_Fox]

Although I hate doing headgaskets and would rather change the whole engine with a known good one.

I concur.. the last one I did resulted in the whole bottom end of the engine blowing out a week after the gasket was changed

 

[Alan.D]

Funny enough you were one of the first who's engine we changed, what did you do to it?

 

[Plug]

It sounds like the kind of job you can screw up royally if you don't know what you're doing, and I have to include myself in that category.

I suppose I can get the garage to take the head off and at least see what the damage is. It might not be too bad, if so it might be worth chucking a new gasket on and see if we can get another couple of thousand miles out of it... that's a years worth at it's current mileage.

Cheers,

Plug

 

[Alan.D]

Plug have you got any manuals as they explain the procedure pretty well. It's just nuts n bolts really for the basic job then once the head is off you can hand it to someone for the skim and ask their advice about the rest.

 

[Plug]

Alan,

I had look through the Haynes manual last night and although they way they explain it sounds simple enough, from the comments that have been posted "it's not as easy as all that". I'm an engineer but not a mechanic, and I can understand how easy it is to misjudge the stresses in an assembly and do some damage if you've not taken one apart before. I'd rather give the guys at my local garage £50 to take it off cleanly as they will have done it countless times before.

Actually getting the head skimmed if required isn't that challenging technically- I've got half a million quids worth of state of the art machining centres at work. I could have a new cylinder head machined from solid billet if I really needed it . It's really all down to cost, the Panda's a lovely little car but you get to a point where you think is it worth it? With a bit of careful searching you can pick up a fairly decent second hand car for not much money these days.. a Micra won't have the Panda's charm but it most likely won't have the reliablilty issues either.

Cheers,

Plug

 

[Alan.D]

What reliability issues ? plus can you see yourself in a micra

If your stuck on a budget change the lot, get a cheap used engine and £60-80 and it's quite easy.

 

[Jaff_Fox]

Funny enough you were one of the first who's engine we changed, what did you do to it?

The engines getting replaced with the donor punto 1.1. Considering that engine was supposed to have only done 12k miles is has never been great and ooozes oil and water from allover

This is actually quite a big project as I have a gearbox I'm going to attempt to overhaul.

PLUG: not to put you off but we knew what we were doing with the gasket change. We had the bolt tightening sequence and torque etc. but the engine still blew a week after. The only thing we didn’t do was get the head skimmed as it was not warped at all. Don't change the gasket unless you really need to :/

 

[posh pandas]

plug , what are you doing even considering dumping the car !!!!!
You have one of the best condition pandas i've ever seen !!!!
any chance you can meet up with someone whos done this ???
please , please fix it ...anything but the scrap yard !!!!!
g X

 

[Plug]

It's not dead yet! Basically it's had an early diagnosis so I'm hoping not too much damage has been done, apart from being gutless it's still running fine (although I haven't driven it since I got the say-so that the HG was on its way out).

It's booked into the garage next Monday for them to whip the head off and then we'll take it from there.

Don't panic, I'll never scrap it. Even if I decide that it's uneconomic to fix, I'll sell it on to someone else to fit a new motor in. I'm sure you and Sprox must have at least one going spare .

Either that, or it's time for that Uno Turbo engine transplant :devil:

Cheers,

Plug

 

[salford scheemie]

well mine went about a year ago and I got it mended and a new cam belt on for about £350. I thought, I could get another car with the money, but who knows what would go wrong with that? And I've had another 15,000 miles of happy Pandering since.