Club 80-90 Forums

Hi

wonder if anyone can tell me if this is what a cracked bore looks like please?

ta

Any vertical marks/scratches that run from top of the stroke to the bottom on a bore are not good, and I see that besides the "crack"

From the picture It is difficult to say whether this is surface cracking or a full on cracked liner/bore (what engine is it?) ....I'm not sure how common this is with T3 engines but I would have thought fairly rare.

Martin

Red Westie wrote:From the picture It is difficult to say whether this is surface cracking or a full on cracked liner/bore (what engine is it?) ....I'm not sure how common this is with T3 engines but I would have thought fairly rare.

Martin

Thanks Martin, interesting.

It is a JX and cleaning it up does not make it go away.

I have had a series of problems, first was total coolant loss - emptied the rad and filled the expansion bottle, then found oil leaking from places which all indicate pressure in the systems from the bore which I thought was the head gasket.

I don't think it is worth putting it back together now I've found this. I was in the process of fitting a new gasket, broke a head bolt so took it all off again to find this crack had become apparent.

Do you know any engineering / welding companies local to you who might do dye penetrant checks. The procedure is pretty simple. A fluorescent dye is sprayed on the crack, left for a minute or two then wiped off with a solvent. Next a chalk like spray is put on and if it is a crack any dye that has penetrated the crack is leeched out and shows up under UV light.

As said above, reall hard to tell from a picky, almost looks like a previouse ceramic seal
M

metalmick8y wrote:As said above, reall hard to tell from a picky, almost looks like a previouse ceramic seal
M

Without a pressure test I will never be 100% sure about this but decided to ignore any doubts and replace the block with a good secondhand sourced locally.

Now pretty much sure that damage resulted from failure of pressure bottle cap which is really annoying but supposedly very common. £6 cap can cause such a load of damage and even more annoyed that the water level warning and temp sender could not warn of loss of coolant in time to avoid such damage.

Well the water level switch in the pressurized header tank should have brought on a flashing red light on the dash.....

The scenario is: the cooling system relies on the pressure cap to increase the boiling point of the coolant, if it has failed then the coolant boils at around 100C instead of around 115C. An engine will typically run in the high 90's and if left standing or caught in traffic can rise above 100C, the thermo switch and fan should cut in and regulate this but if at any point the coolant starts to boil, large pockets of gas are formed creating hot spots in vital areas of the engine as effective cooling cannot take place.

Martin