Thread: Caspers head ache

Well I was heading off to work on Thursday morning with the 6x4 trailer in tow to pick up some small machines and on the Eastern Freeway middle lane at 100kmh a gush of steam from the right hand side of the bonnet.

Instant thought, Expansion tank so I pulled over and sure enough it was.

I had everything in the back to by pass it so no probs untill I needed to refill the system....no water or coolant as I had used it the previous day at a job.

Called the better half to bring coolant and some stuff to tidy it all up a bit and sat around for a bit until she got there refilled and started it up.

Seemed fine, got to the driveway of where I was going and Bang.

I wasn't sure what that was, seemed to be something hitting the fire wall, thinking about all the tools I used and if I put them back.

Anyway, I couldn't find anything so double checked the coolant level in the top bung on the engine and off we tottle home.....got to the front gate of the job and Bang and coolant everywhere.

Blown heater hose, I'm thinking not enough room for expansion now there is no tank so I parked it back at the depot and de tooled and hitched the trailer to Clio (Better halfs Disco).

Picked up Casper on the friday morning on a trailer and picked up some heater hoses and and expansion tank from Rover Craft (Thanks David) fitted tham this morning and now I have a constant stream of bubbles coming up through the expansion tank.

I replaced the head gasket about 2 years ago and the head was tested then and was absolutely fine and just got a very fine skim (.004) to clean it up.

Now I had been losing coolant for a couple of weeks prior to this happening, maybe half a litre per week but no other signs of anything.

Any ideas of what I can do to make it last a bit longer than 2 years again.

It's a 3 hole gasket, 97 300Tdi, Auto and I do between 20,000kms to 50,000kms per year on and off road.

Cheers Casper

The head has a slight bend in the centre (pretty normal) of about 6 to 7 thou and the only worrying part is there are small cracks showing between all the inlet and exhaust valves.

So I have sent it off to Tony my engine man to be hardness, stress, crack and pressure tested and then shaved 6 thou if all the other tests are good.

One interesting thing I found though was that there is very little sign of where it had blown.

You can see the black on the gasket and where it has burned a bit out of the composite material but no big hole like most of the time.

yep mine was like that, just scorch marks on the gasket, 8 thou bend in the middle hardness was 64, no cracks bar the ones at the glow plugs. everything border line so ended up with a turners head, gaskets and bolts.
the disco had 258k on the clock so i am thinking the 250k syndrome as the cause