Headgasket question

Just aquired a 2.0 L series 1999 diesel

A friend from work had a 1989 1.8 petrol which had the headgasket go due to plastic dowlings on the head which he said was a design fault.

Question is, is this true and if so is it a problem with the 2.0 diesel on the L series and if so what can be done to change/prevent future problems for me.

Many thanks for any help or advice.


Andy

I know its so with the petrol model, when our local car sales gets one in the first thing they do is replace the silly plastic dowels with steel ones, they recon the plastic ones let the head move and cause gaskets to fail. dont know about the diesel models though.
Sprox

L series is a good lump - all doozils are better than any of the petrols.

Andy,
HGF is a known fault on the 1.8 petrols, the 2.0 diesels as such don't have a major problem with HGF...you should be reasonably safe, see me siggy below, no hgf to date.........****e, thats tempting fate..

In 10 years as a landy tech, i've never done a head gasket on an L series, I've replaced 1 cracked head and thats it.

So as far as HGF goes, you're well safe, it's just the rest of it thats ****.

Ey up clutchy, where've you bin hiding? Job going OK?