200TDI Land Rover head update

Well, If you have kept up with the saga you know there is no shortage of suspense. And so it continues.......

    I went down on Thursday to check on the welding and to my surprise it was done, $75. I picked it up and drove it over to the machine shop where it was dropped off with Dan. He was going to clean it and pressure test then let me know if it was good.

   I went home and by the time I got there the call was in and it tested good. So I called back and we discussed what to do. I then packed the new valves, valve guides and valve guide seals on my bike and took them down to Santa Cruz Auto. I decided to replace the valve guides even if the old ones were still good just so I would have that comfort of knowing the bits are all new. To my surprise he said it might be done later that day or on Friday. I was surprised because nothing has gone quickly with this project. A lot depended on having the right exhaust seats.

   So late Thursday afternoon and no call, OK tomorrow.........Friday comes and around 10am Dan calls and he's waiting on exhaust valve seats to come in and it will be done by 10am on Sat. Yay!

Saturday(today) around 8:30am he calls it's done! I finish breakfast and hop in the 88 and drive down and pick it up($565). On the way home I thought my friend Brett would like to see it so I stopped by. That's when we took a good look at it. For me less than stellar results as we found 2 cracks.

   So leaving Brett's I went to my daughters house to get a second opinion from her husband. He agreed with me and now I'm going to take it back to the machine shop on Monday and discuss the issues.

Here's some pics;

Before welding and machining on #1 cylinder;

After machining;

Zoomed in with magnifier;

Crack in the #3 glow plug hole;

ARRGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know but too me anything cracked in the combustion chamber needs to be fixed or I'm asking for problems down the road.

   So I took the time this afternoon to check which head gasket to use. To do this you have to find the TDC of each piston and measure the distance in height between the top of the piston and the top of the block. Then pick the appropriate gasket from the chart. Mine is still for the 2 hole gasket.

Chart;

Number of holes                     Metric               Imperial               Gasket

                                              0.60                        0.0196
       1                                        to                              to               ERR0382
                                               0.50                        0.0236


                                               0.70                       0.024
        2                                        to                           to                  ERR038
                                               0.61                       0.0275


                                                0.80                       0.0279
        3                                         to                           to                  ERR0384
                                                 0.71                       0.0314


     Here it is Monday morning and I talked with the machinist. He did see the cracks and his estimation is that they won't be of any concern. I'm thinking he's probably right and the engine will (hopefully) outlive me. Since it is raining I will wait until tomorrow to put the head on.

Latest update, on the 200 head

10.21.2015

So I ordered the head from Craddocks, payment was accepted and a week went by without hearing from them. So I sent an email asking what's up

Thursday am, Them; don't have one, can't find one no ETA.

Thursday pm, Me; I was told they were in stock(sent copy of email).

Fri am, Them; Would you like to send your head in to get refurbished?

Fri pm, Me; No, not cost effective to send from Calif to UK. If you don't have one can I get my money back unless you have other option?

Sat am, Them; We found one needing refurbishing would you like to buy it for XXXGBP? Then we will refurbish for you. Refurbishing cost on separate email.

Sat pm, Me, still waiting for the second email on refurbish costs. I also put in a query to GlobalLR^^

If I didn't have bad luck I'd have no luck at all.

After sending an email to Craddocks on Monday they sent me the recon cost sheet. Funny the recon + the head amounted to the same $ that I already sent them. I declined the offer on Tuesday. I asked for my $ back, it came this morning thru Paypal.

On Monday I took my old head to the local welding guru and he's going to grind out the cracks and reweld it for around $40. Then I'll take it to the machine shop for new seats and stuff.

I contacted Departing90 and his lead turned into a dead end unless one wants a complete 200 located in Southern Cal.

I also contacted Julian at Global Land Rovers. We talked yesterday and he has a head which will be reconned in the UK in 2 weeks.

So it looks like I will have 2 heads for about the same as the cost of 1 from Craddocks.

Now which one will be done first...................or before it rains.

__________________

Land Rover head update

I went ahead and ordered up from Craddocks new valves and valve guides, valve guide seals, injector seals, head bolt kit, rubber plugs for rocker cover. Well, I thought I did anyway. When moving between pages on the website the guides and seals got dropped off and I didn't notice. Now for some reason it takes 2 weeks for Craddocks to process a International order when it used to take 3 days when Penny worked there.
   What's up with that Craddocks?

   So to save time I ordered the guides and seals from Trevor at Rovah Farm.

Locally I researched a machine shop and decided on Santa Cruz Auto Parts ( www.santacruzautoparts.net ). I made the call once all the parts were in and spoke to Dan and confirmed the job was doable. That afternoon I pulled the head and loaded it in the 88 ready for the morning.

Head off, notice no heavy oil;

  So on Tuesday morning I headed down to Santa Cruz after the morning school traffic. I was dropping the head off with Dan and he went about doing his check over and found that the head is cracked in all 4 combustion areas between the valves. So no need to change the guides, I need a new head. F**K!

Here's pics of the cracks after I got it home and cleaned it up real good;

#4

#3

#2, which also shows signs of something getting loose inside and bouncing around.

#1 was the best;

If you go back and look close you can see that there are areas which show overheating with a rough texturing. Also #3 has a raised ridge around it. The head showed some warpage with a straight edge as I expected.

   I brought the POS home and because I was interested I removed the valves from #3, the oily cylinder, just to see what I could discover.

#3 exhaust valve felt fine and the guide wasn't loose, it was however oily under the seal.

Here is looking inside the head behind the valve fairly dry, lots of crud

A look at the guide

The #3 intake valve, note the oil sheen

Inside the head behind the intake valve, note the oil sheen it did not extend up the intake towards the manifold port, So this was likely the problem area.

Now I'm on the hunt for a better head and this is what I'm finding; New heads are pretty rare and costly, most offered are refurbished and want a good exchange head. I think I'm looking at with shipping from the UK somewhere around $1-1.5K for a new and <$1k for refurbished. You can get a 300TDI head for about 1/3 the price and it will bolt on but you have to change pistons also as the piston has the combustion chamber built in and on the 300 it is in a different position as the injectors are located differently.
   To get my head fixed would mean removing the valve seats, grinding the cracks out ,down to the water jacket, welding up the removed portion and machining and re-installing seats then pressure checking the cooling side. If that holds then rebuilding the head, seat grinding, valves, valve guides.......

   I took some cleaner and cleaned off the top of the #2-3 pistons and looked for damage and luckily found none so the bottom end was probably fixed when the glowplug broke( my opinion).

Wish me luck!

Land Rover 109, delayed

Delayed,

    Those not strangers to this blog won't be surprised.

   I had the turbo and exhaust manifold off to try to make the flange a better fit. While it was off I had my son-in-law, Andy, bring over his bore scope which he uses for his plumbing business.

Putting it in the exhaust port we could see it was really oily, no surprise there. The next morning I cleaned the port out with brake clean and stuck the camera back in. Then I poured oil over the springs/valve to see if it would leak and I could see from where. Nothing jumped out I even rotated the crank and watched but couldn't see anything conclusive.

Then after removing the intake manifold I looked in all the ports and found oil on both the intake and exhaust valve guides. So I decided that I would order new valves, guides, seals. When they come in i will pull the head and remove the valves myself and take the head down to get the seats faced and the guides replaced. That's if tearing it down doesn't show any cracks in the head.

I am guesstamating a 2 week turnaround  from Monday Aug 31.

Thanks, Andy!

Land Rover turbo flange leak

Well here we go again!

   The oil leak in my #3 cylinder was apparent by the oil bubbling out of the turbo to exhaust flange. Since noting this I have tried different things to try to mitigate the oil. First I tried new gasket, no help.

Then I filed the surface of the turbo flat and clean as it appeared the worse for wear, no help.

Next up was some exhaust putty, it was hard to put on and oil blew right out. It was even harder to clean off! No help.

Now yesterday I removed the turbo and exhaust and this morning took it down to a machine shop. Jerry looked at it and told me he couldn't hold it in his machine unless the turbo was dismantled. He did get out some feeler gauges and a straight edge to check for the low spot. Right where I knew it was it was .01 low. Pretty darn good for and old guy and some files!

So I brought it home and put it in the vise. Below you can see the pitting from time immemorial. The side on the bottom was the leakier side.

Then using a sanding block I started to work. At first I went with 400 grit but that was hardly removing any material, so I went up to 220.

I don't have any dyekem so I used a Magic Marker to coat the face.

Then a light pass with the sanding block revealed the high spots.

Then back to the sanding. The low spots on the sides were giving me a hard time. Nothing I did seemed to get rid of them.

I re-marked with red ink and checked for high spots.

Then I figured my plastic sanding block was flexing so I used a piece of 1/2' steel plate I had. Wrapping the sand paper around it I went at the flange again.

Again starting over with 220 I worked my way through 400, 600 and 1500 grit. In the end I had not enough gap to fit a feeler gauge through.

All in all I did around an hour and a half  to two hours of sanding, It was 94F today............

I finally got a hold of my son in law and he will let me know tonight when I can borrow the bore scope. I want to look up #3 exhaust port and see if I can find any telltale for where the oil leak is coming from. Might as well do it while I have everything apart.

Land Rover brake bleeding

I had to wait until Monday for the auto store to open so I could get enough brake fluid and start bleeding the system.

 Using the 1 man procedure I filled the reservoir and attached a length of tubing to the bleeder, with the other end of the tube in a partly filled jar I cracked the bleeder open. Starting with the wheel farthest from the master cylinder. Moving to the cab I slowly depressed the brake pedal and released it 8 times. Then checked the fluid level and refilled it. Again I worked the pedal slowly 8 more times. Then closed the bleeder valve.

   Moving next to the other rear wheel I did the same and moved on to the front brakes. This has a larger reservoir so I pumped them 10 times. Once both fronts were bled and closed I tried the pedal and it was firm!!!

I should have no more issues with the braking system (fingers crossed!).

Of course I had to test them so I got my keys and fired up the 109. Cautiously I moved forward a few feet and applied the brakes and then in reverse. They worked.

Venturing out of the drive onto the street I drove forward and back a few times. They worked.

Gaining confidence I headed down the hill and had to stop and pull over for an oncoming car. They worked.

Going to the steepest part of the hill and stopping I applied the parking brake, it slowly rolled forward..... but the brakes worked.

Now I was committed below me lay the road and I would either have to back up or go down. Of course I went down :) aware I did not have my drivers license or phone I ventured onto the road and went about 1/4 mile to where I could safely turn around and headed home. The brakes continued to work and I made it home without incident.

Once home I popped the bonnet to check for leaks, none in the braking system but the oil bubbling out the turbo flange was making a mess!

It was a hot day so I called it quits.


Well I thought I did anyway. Whilst lounging about the house I decided to let the engine cool some and then remove the turbo and exhaust. I have decided to take them in to a machine shop an see if they can fly cut the turbo flange flat to help with it sealing.

    So while the exhaust was warm I stood in the hot sun (94F) and took all the turbo and exhaust off cleaned it up and packed it on my motorcycle for the trip into town in the am.

Land Rover brake master cylinder alternate

If you have been reading along you know that I have had trouble with the LR M/C seals leaking. I have gone through 3 since installing the servo and NRC6096 master cylinder. These were for the Series 3 V8 109, with a plastic reservoir and metric fittings(M12 x 1.00 and M10 x 1.00)

Here is a pic of the first 2;

The reservoir is connected thru these seals and held in place with roll pins. It relies on tightness of the seal to not leak. While mine lasted around 4 months with out leaking, once they started it would take around 30 hours to drain the reservoir. That is just sitting not driving around!

I don't know about you but I don't want to be changing out either seals or master cylinders every 4 months. I want, no NEED something more reliable! So I went looking on forums and found some info on making a Ford m/c work.

What I decided on using is the Dorman M71248 used on among other things 68 Mustangs. It has SAE fitting 1/2-20 for the large and 3/8-24 for the small outlet ports.

   The biggest issue with making the change is that the Rover piston is, when installed on the servo, in direct contact with the servo actuating rod, while the Ford has a deep recess in the piston for the actuator rod. To overcome this I was advised by Geoff T. who had done the conversion on a 110, to make a 7/16"dia x 1.00" spacer. Then adjust the length of the spacer until it fit.

My spacer was made out of a stainless steel bolt, I bought one with a 7/16" shaft and removed the head and threads with my angle grinder and a 1/16" cutoff wheel. By hand, on the grinding wheel and using a flat steel plate, I ground the ends as square as I could get and made the length exactly 1in.

The recess diameter in my Ford m/c turned out to be 1/2" so a larger diameter rod could be used.

Once I had the m/c in my grubby wide hands I set about fitting the final overall length by doing some measurements and trial and error. The flanges between the 2 m/c's are different heights making the depth of the actuating rod fit different.
   Instead of the difficult task of keeping the face flat as I was shortening the spacer I decided on a different approach. Using a center punch I drilled a recess in the end of the spacer. I felt I could have better control over depth and it would allow the actuating rod to seat in the spacer.
   IIRC I drilled 5/64" into the 1" spacer with a 7/64" bit. If I had just done a flat end it would be around .950 overall.

I did have to remove some of the inner wing to fit the reservoir part of the Ford m/c. I used a nibbler and filed it smooth.

I probably went back and forth to the drill press about half a dozen times until I had the flange seated on the servo and no pressure from the spacer on the actuating rod.

Here's the spacer and the servo;

The servo fitting in the Ford m/c;

And fully seated;

The fittings needed to be changed next.

Using my Dremel tool I cut off the old flare and made new ones with my flaring kit.

I compared my flare to a factory one which came with my new fittings. Mine is on the right.

With both fittings done they were hooked up to the m/c and filled the reservoirs with DOT 4 brake fluid. This m/c has 2 reservoirs under the lid.

Next up is bleeding the system.