Hi Guys,
Another day done, a few more miles travelled on the Lister journey...
Yesterday afternoon quite late, I received my replacement cylinder head gasket... Awesome! (Or so I thought...)
On closer inspection I found that while the outer sizes of the gasket seemed to match my roid, the inner bore diameter of the gasket seemed, well, a little bit on the small side from what I was expecting... Not much, mind you, just a few millimeters... (remember, at this point in time, the roid was still running with a rather sickly sludge trying to climb out of the radiator header tank, fuel oil vapours were taking a nice short cut, bugger the exhaust, straight to the cooling system! I hadn't stripped it down yet, I am using it for daily power and hot water...)
Well, to make a short story long, one quick call to the importer later and I had his personal assurance that the gasket was spot on... He even went to his racks and pulled another one out and measured it while I was on the phone... It matched mine to a tee....
Right, plan of action was made... wait for the weather to clear, finish fixing a couple of single cycle hand engines.... (You do of course know what they are, don't you?) ... Clear the decks of the usual paperwork ... Rip the lid off Lizzie... Pop her back together... Wind her up, and... of course, all will go smoothly... been here 100s of times before..... Shouldn't take more than an hour or so..... Right... supper is ready, I will finish this off in a mo! ....
Stewed chicken..... Brilliant!
..... ...... ....
Well, suffice it to say, started the job at about 13h00.... finished it about 20h00.... 7hrs is a "bit" long to loosen a few nuts and bolts....
The damn gasket was WRONG!!!!
In the 7hrs, I managed to get the head off, confirm the gasket was a cock up, scan and touch up a layout of the original gasket, email it to a company down the road, get it laser cut out of 1.2mm aluminium, install it and discover some coolant leaks, remove it and coat the galleries with a silicon based sealer, reinstall it and test, start the green biaatch up..... All running... eventually!
Tomorrow I will speak to the lads that cut this gasket for me and get a few cut in a slightly thinner sheet... this one is 1.2mm aluminium, I am going to try 0.6 as well... the liner step is a wee bit large on my roid, so I am thinking of making an ali single sided composite with a paper lower to try and get away from this rubber goo... Anybody have any thoughts about this? (0.6mm to pump up the compression ratio a bit while I am at it...)
I will also have a chat to the suppliers of the OEM parts.... Seeing that foul language and rude gestures aren't tolerated on this board, I don't think I will be able to give an account of the conversation that will take place.....
The look around the innards was quite interesting while I had the lid off... a little black carbon, not much. A little crusty white deposit, and not too much of that either... what was interesting was the ridge that has developed, it is about .1mm maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less, at the height where the top ring stops... This is after running a sh!tload of really crappy sump gunk as fuel for well over 1000hrs now.. Anybody with comments, please chip in with the "I told you so" now please...Lol... But seriously though, after 1000hrs or more of runtime, what wear has been experienced on our welfare listers on WVO, WMO or DINO? Please chime in and give me a couple of numbers so I can judge the performance of mine...
There are some photos on
http://WWW.warriorpaintball.co.za/private of the head removal and what was found... Including a nasty little ding in the head, right in the middle of where the high pressure ring of the headgasket seats... So far this evening, there has been no blow by on the gasket, coolant is holding its level and all seems peachy, but its only run about 3hrs now... Hold thumbs!
The governor mod is working brilliantly so far... only very little rev change between no and full load, less than 3hz estimated, only thing that shows loading is the exhaust tone deepens as she starts to pull, hopefully I have got at least one thing right over the last couple of days!
Tomorrows plans.... if all holds together overnight .. a cup full of washing powder into the radiator to break down the oil slick and clean it up, bring it to temp and then drain it out... I am not running glycol in it now... let the settled glycol out of Lizzie rid itself of the floating muck and reinstall it in the cooling system... What could possibly go wrong? .... oops... jinxed... better not push my luck too far... enough said!
Ah yes... Suggestions please... Let's give this thread a more meaningful title..... Any ideas?
Cheers... keep the wheels spinning...
Ed