Club 80-90 Forums

Back in October 2018 whilst driving to work one morning, my Caravelle GL (2.1 DJ Wbx Auto), coolant temp red light starting flashing, I knew that my coolant level had dropped in the header tank. I pulled over immediately to check and top it up, but as soon as I got out I could see I had left a water / coolant trail on the road. A quick look underneath and realised that one of my water jacket rubber seals had sprung a leak!! I was only a couple of minutes away from home so turned round and took it back home, carefully keeping an eye on the temp gauge making sure it wasn’t over heating and left it on the drive where it has sat since then.

Anyway, long story made short, In April this year I decided I will have a go dropping the engine and get the dreaded cylinder head nuts off and replace the seals on both sides myself. So I journeyed into the unknown, reading as much as I could on every procedure on this forum (which I must say is quite brilliant!) I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way and had to do a couple of things two or three times until they have been right, learning all the time along the way. It ended up being a top end rebuild and completely renewing the whole of the engine bay coolant system. And only being able to work on it on the weekends it's been a struggle trying to find the time to work on it and get it back in the Bus.

It's taken me nearly three months, but I got there (albeit a couple of small leaks I’ve got to rectify) Last Friday it past it’s MOT with one advisory - a minor oil leak!

So fingers crossed I’ve managed to add a few more years of usage out of the old gal, next jobs on the list (there’s always a to do list!) is to sort out the body work seam rash and rear brakes.

New heads on

Fingers crossed i put everything back together as it should be!

Well done!

Nice work, very clean. Did you nip the heads up again now it’s been running for a bit?

Commendable and inspiring effort, excellent work!
Thanks for taking the time to share the story with us.

DoubleOSeven wrote: Did you nip the heads up again now it’s been running for a bit?

Nooooooooo

^^ Yes Yes, funny now aye. I mean check again to factory Nm, not over tighten.

DoubleOSeven wrote:^^ Yes Yes, funny now aye. I mean check again to factory Nm, not over tighten.

the seal will be broken so you would have to take the nuts off one by one in turn , clean up and reseal....just no.

If one was leaking I'd do it but not otherwise.

DoubleOSeven wrote:Nice work, very clean. Did you nip the heads up again now it’s been running for a bit?

Jeez!! ...my heart missed a beat when I read that.

Don’t think my heart could take the stress of torquing up the cylinder head nuts again.
I must confess I bottled out on the last one i did when installing the heads, i did them in two stages and on the final torque to 50 Nms, the last one starting making a cracking noise at 45 Nms, so I bottled it and left it at 45


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I haven’t done many miles in it yet and had a few teething problems with getting the coolant system bleed and up to pressure, I had a slight leak from the crossover pipe from the water pump to the RH cylinder head, which I have now sorted.

I’ve also got an oil leak which is covering my fan belts with oil and making them screech. I’m not sure if it’s the high pressure switch needs tightening or if it’s my breather tower. The breather tower did seem to have a bit of oil around the base of it and typically the breather tower O ring was the only seal I didn’t renew as it looked ok to me.

So hopefully I will get this oil leak sorted this weekend and start running it in properly.


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AllTheGear_NoIdea wrote:
Don’t think my heart could take the stress of torquing up the cylinder head nuts again.

It is without a doubt the most stressful thing about a WBX rebuild, that and undoing them in the first place.