Club 80-90 Forums

have had a good look through Wiki & Technical Questions and Answers and cant quite find the awnser i'm looking for ,,,,, was driving along and lost lots of water ( 1984 1.9 ) from the expansion bottle ,,,, lots of air bubbles in the top up bottle ,

,, so undid each spark plug in turn to find which cyl the prob was comming from = offside front so think that'll be no 1 pot ,,,,

, eaven at cranking speed was spitting the water out ,, engine ran fine with the plug out ,

, the engine has just had new seals fitted to this side of the engine so my main quest are these cylinder heads known to crack or maybe the seals have not been fitted corectly ,,,,, engine ran fine on three pots but did not want to chance driving another 30 miles , trailer'd home

its not something i've heard of in 16years of owning t25's ,,,,, if these heads crack and let the combustion presure into the water ways ,,,,,so i'd say its the seals either way it needs striping

The heads do crack on the wbx... but as you say.. if its been apart and new seals fitted, then either one was damaged when fitting, or forgot to fit!!
Has to come apart again!! sure the head studs were ok? could be that one has given up after being undone and redone!!!

as far as i can tell the studs look ok will get a beeter look once in bits ,,,,,

got the cyl head off = and there was a bust seal , wether it did this when taking it to bits i'm not sure ,,,,, what we did find was two alloy sealing rings on one side and one on the other now i reckon this would cause the head not to sit true ,, almost lob sided ,,,,,,,as for cracks aqll i could see was a very faint line between the valves will have to have a closer look at this after the weekend now ,,,, going camping in another bus now

Cracks between the valves are fairly normal on these! Shouldnt cause a problem anyhow.

i thought that on a water cooled cracks in the head will let combustion presure out then forcing the water out ,,, but on an air cooled would not be to bad

2 head seals on one side will have cuased a lot of distrotion.. your head may now be twisted....!!!
Cracks... Mmm.. very subjective.. they can crack and not leak and they can crack and leak!!! if a crack has formed then it will only get worse.. + the head has been stressed by the extra seal and the higher temps the loss of coolant will have caused... better find a good one!!!

took the head off a spare engine and one of the studs broke a lot of rust and aloy eaten so thats scrap ,,,,,,,,,

so i clean'd the head up that i had taken off fitted new seals put it all back together ,,,, pulls realy well ,,,,, very smooth done about 100 miles so must be ok

Fingers crossed then Mr Phill!
Sounds like problem solved. Not sure if these engines/heads need it but if they do, remember to re-torque head bolts after a few scenic routes!
Best of luck anyway.

the genuine manual says that heads with cracks up to 0.5mm between plug hole and valve seat are ok to re-use, one of my heads had a slight crack and i re-used it with no ill effects so far, [ 6 months or so]
puzzling why it had 2 seal rings in? that seems most likely cause of cyl pressure blowing into the water jacket.