Head gasket blown, engine is toast, now wearing in a Vege

[Llamapup]

Flippen heck! My Turbo is knackered too! I seem to have turned my number 2 and 3 cylendars into a water pump and chucked an entire radiator full of water through my turbo. The seals are fried, the bearings are pretty crunchy and their is a lot of play in the impeller shaft. This is getting expensive quick.

I wouldn't normally post a message like this on this forum, but I need to vent a bit. I can't tell the missus the whole story, because she panics about how much repairs can cost. She has a general idea about the engine needing replacing, but I don't want to spoil her holiday with the facts about how much my credit card is taking a hammering.

Just I case this gets to be too much for me to afford in the end, how much is a pop-top Westy worth with a brand new engine, turbo, brakes and suspension worth? Hmmmm?

Feeling a bit overwhealmed...

Llamapup

[camper]

https://club8090.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=53563" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; There a turbo for sale on this topic.

[Llamapup]

https://club8090.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=53563 There a turbo for sale on this topic.

Thanks dude. I've already managed to source a recconditioned turbo for a fair price.

I wonder what my Westy will be like to drive with the new engine though? Will I even notice any improvement in performance over my 125K mile lump? Is there a brake-in period that I will need to take note of? What sort of things do I need to do and be careful of in a new engine?

Thanks

Llamapup

[Llamapup]

After 13 days without my Westy while on holiday in the New Forest the new engine, turbo and clutch are in! No more smoke out the exhaust any more. Gearbox shifts much smoother (old clutch was on its way out). The engine is much smoother than the old one, but it doesn't seem to have any more poke. I wasn't really expecting a performance improvement with the same size engine, but I thought their may be some noticeable change. Maybe once the engine beds in there will be a little more grunt.

Thanks for all your advice. Lets hope I make it back to Leeds with no surprises.

Thanks

Llamapup

[windysurfer]

Glad it's all sorted.
Hope you have a good trip back

[Llamapup]

Okay.

Just made it home after marathon 10 hour drive from lovely Keyhaven in the New Forest all the way back to Leeds. The drive started out fine, but after about 100 miles I noticed a stream of water peeing out of the bottom of the engine area while topping up air in the tyres at a service station near Silverstone. Spent about 10 minutes removing baggage and bicylcles off the van to get to engine bay (argh!) and identified that the leak was the water level sensor in the top of the resevoir. This is very frustrating as I asked the garage that replaced the engine to ensure that the seal was good here as the plug blew out under preasure when the engine popped its clogs 2 weeks earlier.

I managed to spot the leak before I lost more than a pint or so of water. The engine never overheated (whew!). I got things sealed up tight with some silicon topped up the water and brought the van up to temp and ensured that all was good. Leak fixed...

Soon after returing to our journey we got warnings of 15 minute delays near Nottingham on the M1. Turns out its a overturned tanker that stops all 6 lanes in both directions for 8 hours. Luckly we met up with a chap from Leeds in a lovely maroon Karman Ghia who help us plot an alternate route home.

The van did well on this crazy journey, but I still feels a bit sluggish and a bit down on power. I'm not sure if this is the new engine bedding in or my imagination.

Llamapup

[R0B]

glad you got it home in the end.bet you nearly kacked your self when you saw the stream of water eh?

[t3trooper]

Hi Glad you made it home safe, the tanker fell onto some car and people were trapped.
Just run in your new engine for the 1st 1000 mls by using your gears and try not to let it labour, try not to let it idle for any length of time e.g.standing traffic or you will be polishing the piston bores,.everything should be tight for a while and will use oil for a while so keep checking till you have it serviced after the 1000 mls.Use a good quality mineral oil during this period.
Happy motoring

Steve

[Llamapup]

Bit of an update on the engine saga:

Now that I have significantly lightened the van (by unloading all my camping gear and bikes on the back) and done some good runs, the engine does seem to be pulling fairly strong. Maybe I'm misstaken but It still doesn't seem quite as free reving from a standing start as I remember the old engine used to be. I feel like I'm having to slip the clutch a bit to let the engine rev up to pull away more than I remembered. I have had a new clutch fitted when the engine was replaced. I wonder if I'm getting much better bite in the new clutch and it means I'm having to adjust my throttle control a bit?

Also, I used to have an oil leak with the old engine. I was expecting never to see any drips under the engine bay with the new engine fitted. Its much better than it was, but I'm still seeing the odd drip. I wonder if there is some aunreplaced ncilliary item that could be leaking. I got a new engine, turbo, clutch and timing belt when the new engine was fitted. Assuming I can rule these things out as source of leaks, where should I be directing my attention to identify the leak?

Thanks

Chris