advice re. Series 2 engine..

Head gasket £3.84 inc VAT, pistons (with rings) up to 70thou oversize £17.62 each inc VAT.

Its not difficult - no fancy tools required except a torque wrench. Most likely you'd want to get the head skimmed (£30-£50 or so), apart from that if you thought it would be a goer when you had the lid off the valve guide seals etc may be worth doing STC1564 Top End Set - 2¼D (includes head gasket) £9.72 inc VAT

Allowing for any head skimming (over night usually) it's probably best to allow a day if it's your first attempt. The Haynes book tells you all you need to know.

Personaly, if it doesnt look to bad I'd give it a try - an unknown engine could come to haunt you....... but then a 2¼ petrol is only worth a lift on the trailer these days.

Richard

I wasn't aware you could take a 2.25 3brg out to 70thou. Where the hell do you buy pistons from?

Alex

Richard, obviously! :)

In news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Tim Hobbs typed: | Just been to the garage w.r.t. getting Stig back (he went for the MoT | on 4th July and hasn't come back yet....). | | Anyhow, he's pissing oil, pressurising the coolant and overheating. | There's always been murk in the oil, so I'm guessing the head gasket | is past it. It's a 3 bearing 2.25 petrol. | | The engine is old and of unknown provenance / condition. | | So, choices choices | | 1. Take the head off and change the gasket. How hard is this? If I | find other horrors (knacked pistons etc) can I just ignore them and | put the new gasket on and work on it not being any worse than it was | before? How much are the parts to do this (I'm guessing very cheap | -Richard?) | | 2. Swap the engine. This doesn't seem like a lot of work to me? More | money for another 'unknown' engine | | 3. Do it right and talk to the nice people at LEGS, Automotive wossit | (?) or Turners. Big dosh, but job done for another 20 years. | | | It will drive home OK (only a mile). is it worth trying to change the | head gasket? How long will it take me and how likely is it all to go | back together? | | | -- | | Tim Hobbs | | '58 Series 2 88" aka "Stig" | '77 101FC Ambulance aka "Burrt" | '03 Volvo V70

Insufficient data. Get it home & rip the head & sump off, and have a look to see what needs doing. Then make your decisions.

Just been going through Haynes. So long as I get myself organised (i.e. lots of clean rags, bags for storing bits in etc) and have all the likely necessary parts to hand it looks within my abilities.

Then again, if the pistons have holes in then I might view it differently!! Consensus seems to be that this is 1950's over-engineering and I really ought to have a go.

Roll on Wednesday evening (that's when he comes home).

Nah...you'll never do it.

To be fair the worst bit I found doing Percy way way back was the weight of the cylinder head.

Having replaced the Pistons and big end shells on the Rangie and done a head gasket replacement at the same time amongst 200 other trivial tasks worst bit then was sealing the sump after.

You should be fine. Besides it's about time you got them knuckles scraped again ;0)

Lee D

Me! Seriously though, I think that 70thou would be pushing things a bit.......

Richard

I've found that lots of sheets of cardboard and a marker pen work better for keeping bolts in order. just stab holes through the card (use the bolt itself or a screwdriver) and store them in that. you can also then write on the board too and keep stuff in exactly the right position. Its alright having a bag of bolts for an item - but then you come to put it back together and find that one bolt is slightly longer than the others....

If it all goes wrong then you will _have_ to go buy one of them turner/automotive engines ;)

It really isnt that hard!. good luck!

Hi Richard,

If I get the lid off and find I need new pistons how quickly can I get them? Is that an engine-out job? If the pistons are shagged does it follow that I need the bores honing?

I'm having my first holiday in years from Tuesday to Friday next week, but normally it's next day. Ig the pistons are knackerd it is quite likely that the bores would need honing.

Generally speaking, the engine would have to come out for honing, but it is possible to fit new pistons with the engine in.

Richard

In Augusts LRO they bored a 5 bearing out from 90.47mm to 95 mm that 4.53 mm or 180 thou Whether the 3 bearing block is thinner bore walls I don't know it was all done at ACR in Deeside