Date:         Thu, 21 Jun 2007 03:38:27 -0500
Reply-To:     Matt Roberds <mattroberds@COX.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Matt Roberds <mattroberds@COX.NET>
Subject:      Re: It's alive,
              but it gives bad head!  (Fixing head leak on '87 2.1L)
In-Reply-To:  <Pine.LNX.4.64.0706170517550.23919@birdbird.example.com>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

Hello all!

A few days ago, I posted the story of helping a friend get his newly-
acquired '87 Westy (2.1L, 150K miles) back on the road.  In brief, it
ran, but required about a gallon (4 L) of coolant at the end of a 10-
minute drive, mostly due to a big leak from the right head.  It also
seemed to lack power during part of the drive.

Before that drive, we had gotten to "crank, tries to fire" but couldn't
get it to fire.  We pulled the plugs that were in there and they had
apparently been in there for a while; the gap was rather amazing.  All
images are about 400kb, 1600x1200:

http://www.birdbird.org/cars/westy/dscn0005.jpg
http://www.birdbird.org/cars/westy/dscn0007.jpg

Replacing those plugs (plus the wires and cap) got it to start.

Tonight we wrenched on it some more and found some interesting stuff.
One we pulled the tin under the right side, we could see that the head
gasket was integrity-challenged.  Look just to the left of the left
pushrod tube (#2 exhaust) in this picture... yes, you're seeing daylight
between part of the gasket and the head/water-jacket joint.

http://www.birdbird.org/cars/westy/dscn0004.jpg

Popping off the valve cover, we got to play a game from our childhood.

"One of these things is not like the others
  One of these things just doesn't belong
  One of these things is not like the others
  Can you tell me which one before I finish this song?"

http://www.birdbird.org/cars/westy/dscn0001.jpg

This is probably why the van just barely made it up the (rather steep)
hill to his house a few days ago.

Taking the rocker arm off, the ends of the valves didn't look too bad
but some of the adjusting screws were pretty beat up on the tip and will
get replaced.

We went on to pull the head and the two frontmost and two rearmost cap
nuts (exhaust side of #1 and #2) had maybe 10 or 15 lb-ft of torque on
them.  The four middle ones (intake side of #1 and #2) were better.
The nuts came freely off once loosened; none of the studs wanted to come
out with the nuts.

We got as far as pulling the head away from the case, but #1 cylinder
wanted to stay with the head rather than staying with the case like #2
did.  We were a little short of time and the right tools, and we didn't
want to lose the piston out of the bottom of #1 cylinder, so we called
it a night.  We did cut the head gasket and pull it off the engine so
we could admire it:

http://www.birdbird.org/cars/westy/dscn0008.jpg
http://www.birdbird.org/cars/westy/dscn0009.jpg
http://www.birdbird.org/cars/westy/dscn0010.jpg

The sealing surface on the water jacket looked pretty good all the way
around.  We couldn't see the sealing surface around the edge of the head
very well, but running a finger around it revealed no major chunks
missing, no major corrosion pits, etc.  We'll know more when we get the
head completely off of the engine.

I think it's safe to say that we found our coolant leak and power loss.
:)

Are there any hot tips to getting the cylinders unstuck from the head?
We tried tapping around, using a chunk of dowel rod as a drift and a
small hammer, putting the dowel both close to the head and further away
from the head on the cylinder.  We also shot some penetrating oil in the
cylinder/head joint, but that hasn't done much yet.  At the moment, we
are trying to avoid having the piston come out the bottom of the
cylinder and having to play ring-compressor games to get things
reassembled.

Thanks!

Matt Roberds