Thread: Rebuilding a Rover V8

Originally Posted by Disco_owner

spent a couple of Hours this morning cleaning and polishing the heads off and I am really please with the results , The top of the valves had quite a built up of carbon , all scraped off with a sharp chisel Being careful not to scarpe into the metal & then all cleaned with petrol sprayed on top them and a gently rubbed with scotchbright and then cleaned off again with a Clean Rag , a lot of elbow grease and results speak for themselves ,





Tony: I also carried out the Leak test you described earlier in the thread by pouring petrol on top of both valves and there doesnot seem to be any leaking thru to the other side.

Mike: My Cam is being kept very warm with the 2 towels straight on top of them

You've got the other one off as well?
Have you got a good straight edge to cheek the heads. They look bloody good from here. You may get away with them as they are. Still won't hurt to get them suface ground if you can organise it.

Khos, you are wasting your efforts cleaning the heads as the head place will dip them and they will come out cleaner than you will ever get them.
Look , think about the effort you went to to pull the thing apart. Do you want to repeat that?
Send them to a head servicer.

You do not know how stuck the exhaust valves are. You do not know the condition of the seats. You do not know how good the guides are. With tin gaskets you need a perfectly flat head and since you undid the bolts in no sequence they may have a bit of a warp.

Regards Philip A

Originally Posted by PhilipA

Khos, you are wasting your efforts cleaning the heads as the head place will dip them and they will come out cleaner than you will ever get them.
Look , think about the effort you went to to pull the thing apart. Do you want to repeat that?
Send them to a head servicer.

You do not know how stuck the exhaust valves are. You do not know the condition of the seats. You do not know how good the guides are. With tin gaskets you need a perfectly flat head and since you undid the bolts in no sequence they may have a bit of a warp.

Regards Philip A

Geez Phill Can you use bigger Fonts , I can't see your writing on my laptop

seriously , the heads are going to a head place , just spoke to BD as he does this in house , so soon as I get the other one off this afternoon , tomorrow am they're going in for a full head service , yeah so I probably wasted a couple of hours , just wanted to see how they would come up when clean .

Good idea to be sure of it. Nothing worse than a sticky valve etc. Ask JC.

Khos, I guess I was trying to cut through the clutter. Everyone wants to help, but they may not know your particular circumstances.

The parts of the heads you ahve cleaned are basically only cosmetic. The iomportant bits are inside the ports, so unless you have a spring compressor, seat refinisher and skill you are best to have them done by a servicer.

BTW I recommend that you have teflon seals fitted to the inlet valve guides only when you have them serviced. This will reduce oil consumption.
These are different to what is there as they are a more recent design. the head place will charge you a little as they have to machine to tops of the guides a bit to fit them. Do not have them fitted to the exhaust guides as many people think that this causes even more problems than normal with exhaust valve sticking.
Regards Philip A

Originally Posted by PhilipA

Khos, I guess I was trying to cut through the clutter. Everyone wants to help, but they may not know your particular circumstances.

The parts of the heads you ahve cleaned are basically only cosmetic. The iomportant bits are inside the ports, so unless you have a spring compressor, seat refinisher and skill you are best to have them done by a servicer.

BTW I recommend that you have teflon seals fitted to the inlet valve guides only when you have them serviced. This will reduce oil consumption.
These are different to what is there as they are a more recent design. the head place will charge you a little as they have to machine to tops of the guides a bit to fit them. Do not have them fitted to the exhaust guides as many people think that this causes even more problems than normal with exhaust valve sticking.
Regards Philip A

Phillip, so far I've taken every bit of advice that you've provided with me on-board, Now , my intention always has been to send the heads away for a service etc , now BD will probably know about the "Teflon seals" around the "valve guides" I assume ? I'll make a call this afternoon , BTW , you'll be please to know that the scotch-brite trick worked very well.


Also I've cleaned inside of the Bores with an old rag as best as I could , I'm barred from using the Dyson Vacuum

Khos, the block is very beautiful.
The big thing to do now is spend lots of time cleaning out the bolt holes, as you can see they are full of scotchbrite and junk.

I am a bit neutral on this but on balance maybe you should buy the extra short bolts but not do them up over about 20Ft lbs. Maybe BD ( is that Bruce Davis?) can give you some short ones as they do not have to be new. They are just to fill the holes and look right.
Regards Philip A

Originally Posted by PhilipA

Khos, I guess I was trying to cut through the clutter. Everyone wants to help, but they may not know your particular circumstances.

The parts of the heads you ahve cleaned are basically only cosmetic. The iomportant bits are inside the ports, so unless you have a spring compressor, seat refinisher and skill you are best to have them done by a servicer.

BTW I recommend that you have teflon seals fitted to the inlet valve guides only when you have them serviced. This will reduce oil consumption.
These are different to what is there as they are a more recent design. the head place will charge you a little as they have to machine to tops of the guides a bit to fit them. Do not have them fitted to the exhaust guides as many people think that this causes even more problems than normal with exhaust valve sticking.Regards Philip A

Hey Phillip, I just remembered something I was going to post up a little while ago and forgot.
The practice of leaving exhaust stem seals off has been common for me for quite some time now, but I got caught with 1 smoking disco recently
It was a WA VIN 3.9, 1999 build D1, and after a head overhaul and tweak etc it started to smoke on hot startup I then discovered that CERTAIN very late D1's have the same valves and guides as the Thor 4 litre by the looks of it, and these MUST have stem seals fitted. A couple of hours work and all was well again

JC