A little while ago my engine decided that it had enough after a period of occasional miss firing and becoming very temperamental to start, on the the way to work it went and blew the head gasket which in term managed to blow a chunk out of the rad. This led to in a short time all the water in the system to escape and i think i have cooked it! :(
The big giveaway was the temp guage shooting past 3/4 and as it hasn't done that before but before i could get off the road it was too late. :'(
Took it to a mates place and was stripped down to find a major headgasket failure (will try to get a picture) And some interesting pitting of the head and the block.
So a replacement was decided and whilst i was looking i stripped it down to just the block and discovered that it really was not in the best of health and was living on borrowed time.
It was all full of sludge and looking like someone had used it as a BBQ pit. Sad really as all i must of done was prolong it as i had changed the oils every 6K.
I had a few weeks later then found a replacement lump
A nice little thing that was a Factory exchange unit that went into a 90 that did comp safari with the AWDC. So it has been tweeked a little with the Die grinder on the ports, and a Lightened flywheel. I was told it had good oil pressure and never showed any signs of water loss when he had it.
A small catch was on the O/S engine mount that the top mounting bolt had sheared and it took yet more time to painstakingly drill it out and tap the threads to remove it all.
After more hassle and the usual Top bell housing bolts that are a nightmare to get too unless you have the grace and the ability of a contortionist and a gynecologist.
The water pump was also swapped over as that had done all of 500 miles on the old engine before it died.
So in it went and i started the task of plumbing it in. and one thing i'm hoping to solve is the problem of the manifold bolts coming lose. On my old engine it was a fortnightly task to nip them up, so i have got an ARP bolt kit made of fancy stainless steel and some locktight. Hopefully it should stay tight.
I got it all finished last night and with a little help from my bro to stick my dizzy from the old engine in and to prime the oil pump i have a running motor again. And after a few small roadtests it is going ok. Just a tweek of the timing and the gas should see it flying along again. As it is ok but there is a small but noticeable drop in power when on LPG.
mmmm 4.2 power! :D
All in all it is a lovely engine and just relaxed when going along. less effort than the 3.9 and the torque means less gear changes too, 1st is redundent unless it's a hill start. Overall Very chuffed!
