the dreaded head gasket

just had bith hgs done ( must have more money than sense) drove it from home to longleat towing caravan all fine , next day went round safari park and it boiled up!!!!!! topped up water from warden in zebra stripped defender ran lovely for rest of day. next day wouldnt start had no water and very little oil left in her. now head gasket gone again, ( only lasted 2 weeks) heads where skimmed and crack tested, any one got any ideas why it should happen again so soon

thanx

rob

Could be anything from the job not being done correctly to an unrelated water leak elsewhere causing it to overheat, could also have developed an airlock in it when it was rebuilt.

I agree with Tervueren,
Also do you know that the heads were skimmed, most garages have to use an outside interest to get there skim work done, if this is the case with your heads there will be a separate receipt when I have skimmed heads I also skim the inlet manifold. Recently I had a chap who had taken his heads to a firm that do not specialize in engine work, but do have facilities to skim, however they made a complete mess of his heads.

robp38 said:

just had bith hgs done ( must have more money than sense) drove it from home to longleat towing caravan all fine , next day went round safari park and it boiled up!!!!!! topped up water from warden in zebra stripped defender ran lovely for rest of day. next day wouldnt start had no water and very little oil left in her. now head gasket gone again, ( only lasted 2 weeks) heads where skimmed and crack tested, any one got any ideas why it should happen again so soon

thanx

rob

Click to expand...

As the other guys have said hard to say what blew it, the overheating caused the gasket to blow, or the gasket blowing caused the overheating.

Where did your gasket blow before, across the flame ring or what, did you make sure the block was ok particularilly across the liners.

Also I did one for a guy years ago where it kept blowing gaskets, and it was a simple case of using the old bolts, they were stretch bolts and should have been replaced, but they, or a least one of them was bottoming out and giving a false impression of the head being torqued.

But I have used stretch bolts again myself but ground a bit off the bottoms just in case, when the bolt holes in the block were shallow.