my st170 has been having some issues lately with water vanishing, lack of power, white smoke so decided to whip the head off and do the head gasket

with it just sitting a couple days cylinder 2 was an inch deep of water which is what i suspected anyway, on looking at the head it seems the water jackets have corroded fairly badly im guessing due to previous owner running brown sludge as coolant.



















my first thoughts is this is beyond repair, but a second persons opinion would be great. i don't think a scim off the top is going to fix this head

 

either get it welded and skim it, or get another head. i wouldn't put it back on as it is. most machine shops should be able to repair it, but it may cost more than a second hand head.

 

get a good thick skim on it and build a naughty high compression motor

 

I'll take it to the machine shop see if they can do anything with it.

 

heads are cheap 2nd hand and that one looks like its not been run with coolant etc to protect it, I would personally bin it and buy another

 

As above heads are silly cheap on eBay due to postage not being easy.

I sold a pair a few weeks back, I think they fetched £30 between them. One 100% complete and the other complete bar the valve springs.
Cheaper than a skim.

 

Thanks very much for the advice, I actually ended up having it welded and skimmed for £70. I did end up with the dreaded p1318 fault code even having undone both inlet and exhaust cams and doing it properly, on investigation it was literally a hair out!

All back together now and all the weird cooling issues have gone. Now to fix this pesky o2 sensor fault code which I have already replaced but keeps coming back!