I just joined the blown Cossie head gasket club

It's managed 116,000 miles without anything major going wrong, or at least not in the 5 years I've owned it! Ah well, just have to get on and fix it I suppose!

I'd best get my toolkit out:



Going to buy some Viton valve stem seals, and a cam cover gasket. Suppose I'll need a cambelt too.

Will also dig out my spare head gasket and new INA tappets. Other than brute force and ignorance, is there anything else I'll need? Wouldn't mind a hand if anyone's willing

 

welcome to our exclusive club!

 

you dont need brute force as that how things break. Its a fairly easy job to do

you also need cam cover gasket and half moons. Make sure the head bolts you get are proper ones

 

Personally I would use ARP stud and nut kit instead of bolts.
As said half moons, use a cometic foam/alloy gasket as is reuseable, use sealant under front cam caps and at ends of half moons, loctite 5900/5910 is best.
Head WILL need skimming and at that mileage very likely new valves/guides.
Take head off with exhaust manifold still on as two nuts a painin the arse to get to, you can get all reuseable cometic for the inlet side as well, apart from the elbow to plenum one.
Give a shout if you need a hand.
tabetha

 

make sure you thoroughly clean out all the oil/water from the blot holes before you stick the head bolts back!

 

and get a new tensioner as well

 

Run a tap down them is best, or if not got taps, cut a slit in a(old) bolt and use that.
Use a stanley blade across the block to clean up, then I use 1000 grade wet/dry oiled on a flat bar.
tabetha

 

cozmeister is peice of piss i got my head off mine in about 40mins then give the head to Damico i would get him to change the stems seals and guides while you there do it properly because good chance the guides are knackered. if i had spare time id come give you a hand but im so busy with work and my own car at min

 

Head's off!

Couldn't remove the last bolt because the teeth had been burred off by some previous deviant. Ended up drilling the head of the bolt out, and the head came straight off! Thanks to tabetha for supplying some quality tools...and effort.

Even to my untrained eye, apart from the gasket, it seems pretty 'normal' in there, thankfully!

Pics to follow...

 

if you are not going to do it straight away, make sure your bores dont have any water in them and keep them well oiled

 

i managed to do a HG on my old escos in 3 hours from running, stripped, new gasket, rebuilt and running again. all down to a early duf cometic multilayer.

 

I would just use standard bolts as the ARP studs will crack the block.

 

+1

 

+2

If you are happy to pay for ARP's you might as well go for proper WRC long studding. Much better

 

exactly what happened to my block

 

If you don't measure hole depth and just ram them in, YES it could conceivably crack blocks, but then you shouldn't be near any engine if you don't measure anyway, I always do, and tap the holes, never had a breakage yet.
I just guess ARP don't know anything about fasteners then.
tabetha

 

 

It's not my engine, so I couldn't give a flying fuck what you put in it, I was just attempting to prevent heart-ache, as I know Chris could do without dodgy advice. How many Cossie engines have you fitted these to then, and how long have you then kept them afterwards?

You last comment is a bit like asking me about Cometic Cosworth head gaskets, you might not like the answer . Both these companies do good products, but I would not fit ARP head bolts or a Cometic head gasket to a Cosworth.....

However, what does Tony know - he's just some internet twat .

 

Chris,
How long as that gasket been gone ?

 

Ummmmm..........


Took me a day or two to work it out.

And I'll be replacing the bolts with standard ones - not 2nd hand ones though.

The gasket will be a Group A Escort Cosworth one.

 

Looks like it has been leaking for about a year .

 

that is a mess! when was the coolant last changed?

 

1988 .

 

The week before it went!

 

why are the coolant channels full of rusty water then? when was it done before that?

you often find that fresh coolant causes a leak though as the previous muck was blocking it up. had the same on my impreza. drained the whole system and dropped the rad to replace the cambelt and filled up with fresh coolant and the waterpump started leaking

 

OMG!

 

It looks rusty because it's Halfords coolant which is bright orange when it comes out of the canister.

The old stuff was blue, and was changed 2 years previous...

 

I think the quote "It's managed 116,000 miles without anything major going wrong" puts him in a way more exclusive club than anyone on here!!!!

 

The head's not come off in the five years I've had it - and by the looks of it probably hasn't been off in the intervening 15 years

 

My thought's EXACTLY!! I used standard blots and everything has been spot on!

 

I'm no expert but all I can tell is that some people have had problems with them, and some haven't. What I do know is that the standard bolts have been there for God knows how long, and have held out, so I'll go for those.

 

the block is designed to take a bolt not a stud the best thing you can do with an arp stud kit is to weld the nut to the stud hey presto it's a bolt

 

Standard Ford Stretch bolts have done fine for me too mate

 

 

correct installation is the key to arp's,so if you dont know this steer clear.

 

see if an engine has the arp stud and nut kit can they be changed back to standard no problem?

 

yes you can interchange with arp and std

 

i blew my headgasket two weeks ago and now she`s getting broke so i can go racing

im quite shocked that my standard headgasket lasted 500 miles considering i was running 2.4 bar of boost with my t4 hehe, b4 anyone says it no i didnt know it was standard gasket as i had reciepts for grpA headgasket.......

 

Took the exhaust manifold off the head tonight.

What a fucking game that was!

Hint for anyone that's embarking on the same task, and hasn't done it before - you'll need WD40, a long handled 13mm spanner and a 13mm socket. And someone to hold the head while you try to undo the nuts!

First, I thought the nuts would just come off with a bit of elbow grease. The first one did. The next one took longer - because it was unscrewing the stud it was on! Not much of a problem really, seens as half of the studs were missing anyway! I'd love to know what the previous owners actually did to this before i got it!

I'm guessing that at some point the exhaust manifold was a slightly different affair, and was put back to standard in either a hurry or just for a giggle. Not one of the inlet manifold bolts or nuts were missing...draw your own conclusions!

I simply couldn't undo the nuts holding the turbo to the second part of the manifold, so had to try and work around it by undoing the manifold nuts instead.

After much grunting and swearing, the manifold came off, complete with turbo. Here's the pics - tell me what's wrong with the manifold........

 

it happend to me and ended up doing everything on the carspent 9.5k up too now...still spending should be worth it though i got a wrc headgasket so that should do the trick