Series 3,Changing Head Gasket?

90truckcab said:

check the distributor, sounds like the vacum pipe is off, it sucks from the carb and opens up the timing on the dizzy, as under 1500 rpm yer dont have enough centrofugal force on the distributor shaft to open up the advanced timing to run the engine evenly it will judder !

put a hose on the brass pipe on the dizzy diaphram and suck and blow, if yer take the cap off and yer can see the plates moving as yer suck and blow its working ok, if it sounds stuck or a dead noise, its ****ed

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Will check this out this afternoon and post up the outcome later tonight mate,,

Update:

Did as you said "90truckcab" blew through/sucked the brass pipe as hard as possible but no movement or noise what so ever.So im guessing its knackered then, is there anything else I should check, the distributor seemed to be working fine prior to the head gasket been removed with no starting/running issues.

Will await your reply,,,and thanks again for your help.

Just to update incase you havnt seen my other topic on here,, Ive gone ahead and ordered a lucas 45d type Electronic distributor and Sports Coil. So will await for this to arrive and see were we are.

yep, see if that makes a difference,

out of interest , did you take off the distributor cap and look inside as you were sucking on the pipe? if there was no movement , it sounds like a nacker !

90truckcab said:

yep, see if that makes a difference,

out of interest , did you take off the distributor cap and look inside as you were sucking on the pipe? if there was no movement , it sounds like a nacker !

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Yes the cap was removed,, no movment what so ever, Will fit the new distributor when it arrives and update this topic

There's been a lot of useful info on this thread, which I've used for for my own Series 2A head change.

However, I could really use some advice as I've a few problems:

The original reason for head removal was to fit new piston rings as I had bad compression and lots of brown smoke. Cyl pressures before new rings were:
1. 10.2 bar
2. 10.2 bar
3. 10.3 bar
4. 9.9 bar

Pressures now are:
1. 11 bar
2. 11.5 bar
3. 11.3 bar
4. 10.9 bar

However, I now have copious amounts of white smoke and have had the head back off twice, I think that there is water getting into cylinder 2 as it has a white emulsion in it. I'm thinking I need a head skim, I've run a engineering rule down the head and it does seem slightly bowed. As the head and block faces are really clean, I'm a bit stuck for inspiration.

Question 1 is how will I know if a head skim is required - ie, would even the slightest bit of deflection cause a problem (using a composite gasket)

Question 2 is that I also found a lot of oil in the cylinders and although I have new piston rings and my cylinder pressures seem to be quite good now, where is the oil coming from? (could it be crankcase breather or rocker breather which both feed into carb?)

One good thing was that when it was running, it didn't misfire or make unpleasant sounds!

Help me Obi-Wan, you're my only hope!