Thread: looking at a d1 that needs a head gasket

3.9 Discos can slip liners as well.

I have had good results with "seal up" for temporary (or permanent!) head gasket type repairs.

The air sucking noise is likely to be a vacuum leak from somewhere.

She mentioned something about hoses too so a vacuum leak could be one of the culprits.


is it worth trying to chuck in some seal up and pray to buddah it works?

Petrol D1's are a dime a dozen and cheap so why got thru the head aches of rebuilding for the sake of a few hundred $ ?

Yeah was thinking of that actually. might be better to buy a whole engine or something. lol.


ill try running a can of stop leak into it first though and see how I go. wont be able to try till next week so I'll be back with an update then.

Seal Up is probably the best one....worth a shot for ten bucks...

Originally Posted by loanrangie

Petrol D1's are a dime a dozen and cheap so why got thru the head aches of rebuilding for the sake of a few hundred $ ?

+1

It's seldom as simple as just needing a head gasket.

If it's been driven with a failed gasket for some time, there will probably be some gas cutting of head and/or block, so not resolving that will result in early demise of replacement gasket. Heads might need valves dealt with... it goes on. I've been there and done that. Although my engine now runs beautifully it took months and $4.5K to do everything that needed doing - and that was doing everything but machine work and balancing myself.

In my bitter experience over the last 3 years, anyone who diagnoses "blown head gasket" on a 3.9 is probably wrong. Almost all of the ones I have been asked to fix ended up being cracked blocks/slipped liners. Heavy duty stop leak and a replumbing of the 8mm bypass hose to the top of the rad (drill/tap it into the top of the coolant expansion tank instead) can extend the driveability of these engines. Best cure is a fully rebuilt engine with the top hat liners. That job is worth about 3x the cost of another Disco at the moment.

Sucking noises are unrelated. Use a 1 metre length of hose as a stethoscope and find the source of the noise. Often it is the hose to the fuel pressure regulator, at the back of the manifold.

Or value of the Disco times π. (3.141592654)