Coolant Loss - HGF

[fjmuurling]

Hi all,

2 weeks ago I took the car for it's first trip since 3-4 months. Upon return (apron 150 km) the cooling water warning light in the dash illuminated just before arriving home. After cooling down I found the header tank almost empty as well as the expansion tan in the left side of the boot. The carpet below the expansion tank was also wet. Clearly the loss was caused by pressure in the cooling system.

When I pulled the plugs they all had a normal white / greyish deposits indicating a normal combustion and they were all nicely dry.

A week later I had some more time for investigating and started the car up (refilled the coolant first) and saw a stream of very small bubbles circulating in the header tank, my first thought was oeps this is not good maybe there is a leak in the turbo.

I should also mention that the sump level is / was not increasing and there is no white mayonnaise in the oil, but there was a very fine film of oil in the empty expansion tank which I cleaned last year. Also on start up there was no excessive amount of white smoke and once hot the white smoke was gone.

This week I continued the search for the coolant theft. After removing the spark plugs again I found that no.2 was a little bit moist. Probing around with a home made tool (like a flexible cotton swab) in the the cylinders I found that the no 2 cylinder was a little moist. So for the final test I modified a spark plug (removed the electrode and the ceramic part) so I had an rude adaptor for putting and thick walled hose in, in order to pressure test the cylinders one by one when they were in TDC. No 1 & 4 were the first to be tested because they were the easiest to put in TDC with the marks on the crankshaft pulley, result no air in coming in the header tank. Next was no 2, after rotating the crank for 180 deg. (aprox because there is no reference on the pulley) I put air into the cylinder and guess what the header tank started overflowing. I didn't check no. 3 anymore.

So it looks like a HGF (Head Gasket Failure) and started to make preparations for the removal of the Engine as I see no benefit in doing it with the engine in situ.

Any ideas comment etc are more than welcome.

Freek

BTW I will make pictures and post them here.

(@moderators is this the right sub forum or should it be in the Esprit projects area ??)

[Rich H]

Bad luck

Hope the fix goes well!

[mr.oogieboogie]

bugger. pics would be good of the strip down and rebuild.

[Vulcan Grey]

I'm currently working on my blown head gasket... my car and Freek's share the same color, so he can use my photos

https://picasaweb.google.com/116113253735518541549/LotusHeadgasket

[fjmuurling]

Hi Travis,

thx for the offer, very useful pictures. I see that you are doing the surgery in situ ?? I'm planning on pulling the engine.

Not much progress this week busy with other things.

Freek

[Vulcan Grey]

Ihad planed to replace the head gasket in situ, but then i found the coolant in my oil, so i removed the engine. I did leave the transmission in place since it has recently been re-sealed.

[fjmuurling]

Below are the first pictures of the works in progress. Not so much to see, but so far I drained the cooling system (engine and charge cooler), removed the header tanks, undid the clutch slave cylinder, removed the exhaust system with the brackets, removed the boot floor and the hatch, undid the gear selector cables, disconnected all (I think) electrical connections and labelled them.

The header tank doesn't look to good, it was wet on the outside while it was already empty for a week (only some leftover remaining after draining).

Edited April 21, 2012 by fjmuurling

[fjmuurling]

Today I finished disconnecting all cooling water hoses, oil hoses, electrical cables, fuel lines etc. I also removed the AC compressor (kept hoses) connected to compressor, removed the header tanks, intake manifold, heat shield at the LH engine mount and the ignition module. I also undid the 4 nuts of the engine and gearbox mounts (kept the bolts in just in case).

The only thing to do (I think) is to attach the load leveler and hoist the thing out which will happen upcoming friday if things got right.

Keep you all updated (with pics underway).

Freek

[fjmuurling]

The engine is out complete with the gearbox.

The above picture shows the moment before taking out the whole lot, however when the lifting started I discovered that one cooling water hose was still connected, so after struggling for 30 minutes to undo the hose in the water pump the beast was taken out.

It involved some carefull juggling with the load leveler but all went well without problems.

The engine is now mouted on an enginestand and I'm in the process of cleaning and removing more than 20 years of dirt and grease etc.

Freek

[Rich H]

Good work!

[fjmuurling]

The cleaning and the disassembly started, the cleaning is time consuming.

The right side is finished and the left side is still being worked on.

The Turbo came off without many troubles, I only had to modify (grinding) a ring spanner for one of the nuts.

It looks like there were two gasket between the Turbo and the manifold but I think the original gasket is a laminated one. The Exhaust Manifold didn't give problems with removing, a few studs came out off the head and the threads look OK, I will clean them up before everything goes together.

the manifold looked OK but on closer (not so close) inspection this manifold also suffers from the crack syndrome, the crack is at the aft part of cylinder 3.

I hope it can be welded, the overall state of the manifold looks good, we will see. Before I take the head off I have to finish the cleaning job and measure the valve clearances and then the Head Gasket will unveil it's secret.

Freek

[Gasman GT3]

Freek,

Dont weld the manifold it wont last and you will end up doing it again. Best to change it now for a few more years of trouble free motoring

[fjmuurling]

Sorry for the delay but progress is made. After a lot of cleaning took the camshafts off after measuring the clearances.

Camshaft removal.

This was followed by removing the head.

Headf off, liner clamps in place, cleaning piston crowns.

The HG looked still good but upon close examination found the failure place.

Looks like that the reinforcement in the gasket corroded and expanded and caused the leakage.

Freek

[Vulcan Grey]

interesting. Here's how mine failed (at cyl #4)

[fjmuurling]

Hi Travis,

yours is a little bit more obvious then mine, above picture in my post was taken after a couple of days of dismantling, when I pressed on the bubble (middle of picture) cooling liquid came out. The second blister is in the top right corner of the picture. The metal sealing rings in the gasket were fine as far as I could see. I think that the blister kind of failure is in line with the very gradually increment loss of coolant i had. Have you ever seen a failure like mine, the rest of the gasket looks / is still good.

One question I have did you use permabond or a normal gasket for your crankshaft seal housings?

Freek

[Vulcan Grey]

for the front and rear main crankshaft seals, I have used Loctite 518 anaerobic sealant, and I have used a gasket with hylomar dressing. Both worked and did not leak. However I did have a leak at the sump to block from using just the Loctite 518, so I think I will do something different this time.

[fjmuurling]

Today I cleaned up the threaded holes in the head, cleaned the valves and started grinding them in. The cleaning of the exhaust valves took a long time and the dremel made some overtime but deposits on the valves lost, the inlet valves were very clean and need only a light brush up.

Cleaning of the threaded holes and the dirty valves.

Cleaning in progress and the clean valves, the picture is not as good as the end result, they look much better than in the picture.

[fjmuurling]

It's been a long time but progress is made.

 

I had the head machined as there was a little bow in it.

 

The valves back into their right spots

 

This plug is easily forgotten.

 

Goodies, as it turned out later not all of them were good see the other topic which HG.

 

Fitting of the Front Crankseal with a home made tool.

 

More to come,

Freek

 

 

 

[benjamincalleja]

Question, how often should the head gasket be changed and can it be done engine insitu? I don't know when mine was done last

[ramjet]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Mike6]

Only replace if necessary. I overhauled my complete engine with it in situ so yes head should be removable but difficulty is dropping the exhaust manifold as there is barely enough enough gap up against the chassis. Some garages insist on removing the engine but mine came out with a bit of fiddling around. 

[benjamincalleja]

and the way i can tell it needs to be done is by checking for coolant for 'mayo' every so often?

[Mike6]

Yes, if oil gets into the water it can get very frothy. Conversely if water seeps into the chamber you will get loads of steam out of the exhaust and terrible running.