Zel's Fleet Blog...Rover, Renault, Peugeot, Trabant, Invacar & Sinclair C5

[Zelandeth]

Does it have a roof mounted aerial, our 206 developed a leak every time you put the brakes on.

It does. This will be investigated in due course.

-- -- --

Off with its head!





Nothing immediately obvious like a seat hanging half out the head, though I'm going to do a leak down test on all of these later today to see how well (or not) the rest are sealing.

Can't pull the valve yet because I realised that I lent my valve spring compressor to someone about 15 years ago and never saw it again. Have one arriving tomorrow.

Here's a closer look at number 5.



Then it's neighbour number 7 which I know was firing just fine.



It does look like the intake valve on 5 isn't seated quite as deeply as on 7. We'll get a better look when I pull the valve.

There's a bit of tarnishing in the cylinder, but I've seen (and run) worse.



I am slightly suspicious as to whether this gasket had sealed properly.



Especially around here.



Just surprised to see that much surface oxidation given it's something meant to be clean, then sandwiched up against a gasket...unless whoever put it together last time just chucked it together without cleaning anything.

I did notice what appears to be a 2019 date code.



Which if it is indeed a date code suggests someone has been in here relatively recently. Which probably explains why the exhaust manifold just unbolted without any hint of protest.

Speaking of gaskets, there will be a slight delay before things go back together (obviously investigation of my issue and cleaning will take a bit of time anyway). Spot the deliberate mistake.



Yeah... someone managed to order gaskets for a two rather than three row head...despite checking three times. I do despair at my mental capacity sometimes.

[Dick]

Will you be skimming the heads?

[Zelandeth]

Will you be skimming the heads?

I'll be making a judgement call on that once I've had a chance to clean everything up, get a proper look at the head and get a straight edge on it. If there's no sign of any problems I'll probably leave it alone.

-- -- --

Leak test actually didn't reveal much. Which made me even more suspicious.

There is always some pressure against the valves because of the spring in the hydraulic tappets providing some pre load. So it's possible that if a valve wasn't seating 100% with that bit of pressure present, it might be without it - if for instance we had a slightly bent valve or something like that working against us.

With the valves pulled from number 5, no signs of damage to the seats at least. Things have just had a really quick wipe down with a rag here.

Inlet valve seat.



Exhaust valve seat.



Quite a bit of crusty carbon buildup around the exhaust valve seat, the valve looking correspondingly crusty.



Intake valve really didn't look bad.



Of course today is the day I've run out of brake clean isn't it...

Rolling both valves on a flat surface I couldn't see any visible wobble of the heads, so if there is anything amiss with them in terms of being bent it's really subtle.

After only a few seconds of lapping the intake was looking way better. Reckon that will clean up just fine.



The exhaust valve is a slightly different story. There's quite a lot of pitting around the sealing surface, which in a couple of places does span the full contact area.



After a little while I noted that it looks like when spinning the valve in the head that the valve head on this one is rotating a *tiny* fraction off concentric...so maybe the stem is slightly bent.

It's barely, barely visible...but my understanding on things like this is that it's perfect or it's not pretty much. Sadly I don't have the equipment to really measure the run out and see if it's just the outer part of the head that's off rather than the actual sealing surface...but for the sake of £8 or thereabouts for a valve, I'm just replacing it as a precaution. If there's any suggestion that the valve may have been subject to trauma I'd rather just change it than have the head drop off in 500 miles and write off the piston and cylinder liner...which would cost far more than £8 to sort.

Obviously I'll need to inspect the others here to ensure there are no other valves with issues. Cue potential for things to snowball...do I just replace them all out of an abundance of caution? I'm already leaning towards pulling the other head given the potential evidence of this side having had things poorly prepped before fitting and possibly not been properly torqued down. Suddenly that's another £150 worth of valves added to the bill!

[Zelandeth]

Rest of the valves are now out.

1. Intake.





1 Exhaust.





3 Intake.





Couldn't help but notice the cup in the valve head is rather odd centre...3 and 7 are both like this, 1 and 5 aren't.



3 Exhaust.





Possible historical evidence of a dropped valve in the head by this valve seat? Nothing on the piston, but I'm tending to think this is the old heads dropped on a far newer/rebuilt block based on my findings so far.

Including 5 for clarity even though you've already seen these.





7 Intake.





7 Exhaust.





The exhaust valves all have quite a bit of wear on them. So I'm inclined to at least replace tbose. Also notable that the wear line on them all is really close to the lip, whereas I'd tend to expect it to be nearer the centre of the sealing face as on the intake valves.

I do note that exhaust valves are available in 33 or 34mm diameters... could someone have put 33mm valves in here when the head was set up for 34s?

I'll dig out the calipers tomorrow and measure what's in here. Most likely I'll be getting a full set, just seems sensible for long term peace of mind.

[Dick]

I'd like to know why some of the valves are different to the others.. looks like a bitza motor..

[Zelandeth]

I'd like to know why some of the valves are different to the others.. looks like a bitza motor..

It absolutely is. Pretty sure the bottom end is newer than the heads. Given the marks on the head in no 3, I tend to think that historically there may have been a valve/piston interface at some point which resulted in a couple of valves needing to be replaced.

[Dick]

Or you could pop a 4.6 engine in.. im sure there's a lot of broken range rovers near you

[Zelandeth]

Or you could pop a 4.6 engine in.. im sure there's a lot of broken range rovers near you

I'd rather not have to deal with the nonsense of trying to insure a vehicle with mods like that again thanks!

[Zelandeth]

Got the Rover's valves measured today. Confirming we do have 40mm intake and 34mm exhaust valves.





Which also matches the part numbers on them. ERC9088 on the intakes, and ERC9089 on the exhausts.

Decision has been made that we're just buying a full set of valves. All of the exhaust valves have a decent amount of wear on, I'm already replacing one inlet valve that's suspect - seems daft not to just do the rest at that point. I'm having to wait for parts at this point anyway. Getting a full set for both banks as there's no reason to expect the other bank to be any different.

The Peugeot was in getting the timing belt done today and the whining noise investigated. Said whining noise turned out to be the alternator, which is a bit annoying as it was the more expensive option.

So an expensive day.



At the end of the day it's done now and shouldn't be something I need to worry about for a good while. The intention is for this to be a long term keeper, so I'm not worrying too much about the bottom line. This isn't work I would have any interest in doing myself really, and as this is the daily driver I really need it to Just Work, I can't afford it to be off the road for a month while I muddle my way through it.

Also yes, I may have been able to get it done cheaper some places - but where? Out of the six places I spoke to, only two were willing to even book me in because they're so busy, and one of them were booking well over a month in advance.

I'd been half hoping I might be able to get the Rover ready to at least limp over to the BL show at the MK Museum on Sunday (it's only a couple of miles), but that's clearly not going to happen at this point given I'm a bunch of valves short of being ready to put it back together which won't likely be here till mid next week. So we'll likely be taking the P4 instead. Yes it's pre-BL but it should be of interest at least.

[Dick]

Or you could pop a 4.6 engine in.. im sure there's a lot of broken range rovers near you

I'd rather not have to deal with the nonsense of trying to insure a vehicle with mods like that again thanks!

Oooh tell me more!