Club 80-90 Forums

Hi Folks,

Newbie here... signed up to get some help on a tricky decision.

Got a T25 DG1.9, water-cooled (1984). Lovely van inside and out, but the head gasket's just gone. Got our first kid arriving in a three months and trying to sell the van but not sure whether I'm better off putting a new engine in and trying to make the money back on it with a higher price, or whether I'm better off selling it as is and cutting my losses.

How long's a piece of string!? Anybody got any thoughts / advice on this? Anybody want to make me an offer!

Cheers,

Ian

If it's just the head gasket, why not replace that? You'll get far more than the price of the gasket back when you sell the van with a working engine then. Even if you've blown the head, it's not necessarily irretrievable. Head off, skimmed, back on with a new gasket, and voila!! It's a job you can do yourself if you are a reasonably competent DIY mechanic, for the price of the skim, a new gasket, and a new set of head bolts.

However, if the head is proper fubarred.......

Define

Lovely van inside and out

we looked at a great many

Lovely van inside and out

that you wouldn't let a dog sleep in.

Opening a WBXer is the ultimate can of worms ... snapping exhaust studs, exhaust itself, pipework, head condition, overheating damage ? To do it properly the barrels have to come out to replace the base seals which may or may not have been disturbed, snapping headstuds, piston rings, gasket set £tc £tc .... that's without mentioning the undefinable labour charges.

See what I mean.

Ian.

Mollusc wrote:Hi Folks,

but not sure whether I'm better off putting a new engine in and trying to make the money back on it with a higher price, or whether I'm better off selling it as is and cutting my losses.

replacement engine £1000 fitted and working (elite VW)
would your van go up a grand with it fitted? ....

that's how much a punter will want knocking off.. plus transportation costs... if you sell it busted.

Thanks folks, very helpful all round.

Got a guy who does general (inc a fair amount of old VWs) engine rebuilds and he quoted / guessed at £1400 to remove, skim etc. This is the more than a re-con from Elite with labour from my local friendly mechanic (roughly £1100), so I'm going with the Elite option and cranking up the price accordingly. It's a Viking conversion and I've just seen one go on Ebay for around £5500 so that's encouraging.

Thanks for your help.

Ian

Be interested to know what he thinks he's going to 'skim' on a wbxer

Ian

Err, that'll be me extrapolating rather than what he said! That's what he suggested for the rebuild.

I assumed they remove the head and re-machine the gasket surface, but I'm way out of my league, so the error's all mine (in an attempt to look like I know what I'm talking about).

Cheers,

Ian

He suggested skimming...OK he knows "old VW's" but does he know WBXer engines?

The pitting is usually far to deep to skim heads.. and a waste of time IMHO
JB weld is the best way to smooth out the surface.. fill the holes.. not take out half the head

Prep is important, you want to get down to clean metal down inside the pits, then degrease and dry with a volatile solvent like Brake kleen.

Then you fill with JB Weld let cure, and use a large (12 x 1" ) mill file to carefully take it all down flat again. I actually file the whole end of the water jacket flat this way, going round and round and between the studs at every possible angle, always using another part of the jacket as a flat reference loaction so the file is always flat. You can remove a few thousandths of an inch this way, at most, the epoxy filled areas will actually shrink smaller so you see how minor they actually are. Deburr and chamfer the edges of the jacket very slightly, inside and out, and it's ready for a new water jacket channel seal.

Always apply sealant to both sides of the channel seal (inside the channel as well as on the outer flat face as the book shows). Keep sealant on the flat face to a bare minimum to minimise the crevice corrosion that excess beads of sealant will initiate; that's how the whole head corrosion process gets started.