Club 80-90 Forums

Hi All,

On a recent trip to the lakes at Easter a loss of coolant was diagnosed as a blown head gasket resulting in the AA relaying us all the way back home!!

On removal the head (its a JX TD) was found to to have been cracked in 5 places and subsequently replaced.

Result; the van runs much better, engine pulls (or should that be pushes) much more readily. No "kangarooing "from low revs when pulling away from a junction etc.

The other difference though is that the temperature guage which used to sit dead centre right over the top of the coolant level led now sits about one full needle width to the right i.e. warmer. this raises three questions
1. Should I be concerned about the apparaent rise in running temp?
2. Why would this be the case?
3. What does replacing the head have to do with "kangarooing"

If anyone has a view or knowledge about such things, would you be willing to share?

Mine did this to a lesser extent when I had my head replaced, mine runs up to just past the red light, some times when going up hill even higher, I thought about replacing the thermostat with one that opens to 80 C just to be one the safe side. If anyone has further light and knowledge on why our JX's now run hot I would be interested.

that would be my first effort..change the thermostat and see what its like...sometimes bits of the old head gasket can fall into the waterways and clog up the thermostat when its cleaned from the block.easy to do and cheap