Land Rover 200TDI valve stem seal replacement

Ah dear readers, (Paul ;^))

 I started last Saturday on taking the head off my 200TDI to discover the source of the oil in the exhaust. I started by draining the coolant.

Next I removed the air cleaner and turbo;

then the intake and exhaust, to do this I had to disconnect the down pipe under the vehicle,

with the intake/exhaust side done I started on the fuel side by removing the fuel spill rail and the glow plugs and injectors, pictured are the injectors,

These proved not easy to remove due to the crud in the injector well. I got them out by putting a wrench on them and twisting back and forth while pulling up with my left hand.

Then after taking off the rocker arms and drilling a board for the push rods to keep them in order I loosened the head bolts, man I must be getting old I had to use a cheater bar to break them free. I then drilled out another board to keep the head bolts in proper order.

I got ready for the big job of lifting out the head. Done this before on 2.25 petrol and diesel engines before always been hard on the back due to the weight. I was pleasantly surprised at how light the aluminum head is! Below is the head off and the gasket still in place. Another surprise was the head not sticking to the gasket or the gasket to the block!??

It was a relief to see the gasket intact with no oil passages blown thru. I took off the gasket and looked at the head.

It too looked good. So on to the head, despite the oil on it it looked good too!

So I then figured it must be the valve stem seals, in the pic you can see the seals, looking kinda orange, the one on the right is way off and the left is only slightly off of the seat.

Here's a couple of pics of my shop;

Since I had pre-ordered new valve seals I pulled up a stool and went to work removing the springs and replacing the seals. Below is the #1 valve with the spring removed, you can see the seal is too high. The next pic is the new seal almost seated.

And #2 not seated;

Rather than show you each seal I figured I would show the different steps to change the seals. First you have to compress the seal. My valve spring compressor was bought in the early 80's to work on my 2.25 petrol. After the spring is compressed you have to tap it down to break free the split cone from the valve spring cup, then you can remove the split cones and lift off the spring gaining access to the seals.

Keep track of the split cones and I found it easier to remove and manipulate with one of those small retrieval magnets. I did 1 at a time to not mix up parts.

Compressed spring;

This seal was waaaay loose;

I couldn't push the seal all the way down by hand so I used a piece of 1/2" tubing and a hammer to tap them all the way down, would have been nice to have something round but it worked!

Once the seal is back on just lower the spring into the recess( the alli heads have a steel plate to sit on) and finagle the split cones back into place. Then pull up on the spring to trap the split cones in place and let tension off on the spring compressor making sure the bottom of the spring seats in the recess.

Repeat 8 times and yer done!

Putting the head back on required a new gasket and a learning experience for me. This head doesn't have a final torque setting. First you set all the bolts in sequence to 40nm, then you have to turn each bolt 60 degrees in sequence, twice making the rounds. Man that was tiring! There is barely enough room to turn some bolts while the engine is in the vehicle. Hopefully I got it done right(fingers crossed!).

I didn't quite get it all put together after a 10 hour day. I have an issue with the thermostat, when I removed the elbow the seal around the t-stat was destroyed;

A call to Trevor at Rovah Farm showed that the wrong t-stat had been installed, one without the integrated seal was called for Part #ERR2803. So I cleaned it up and made a new gasket this morning and put it on.

Then I started putting the exhaust manifold on, while tightening the nuts on the top center I heard a "ping" noise. Figuring something broke and rather fix it now than later I removed the manifold and found a crack in one of the mounting tabs.  I took it down to Santa Cruz to the welder and will pick it up tomorrow.

IF all things go well tomorrow I just have to put on the manifold, turbo and heater hose, fill with coolant and fire it up! Then I can pull the extra fuel tank and take it down to the welder and fix the pinhole leak in a weld.