ooooouch !!!!!!

[JD GTE]

opps

got the head skimmed the other day, only had 0.2 mil taken off BUT the person who owned the car before must have had the head skimmed too because once it was back together & we ran the car the nasty noise of Valves agains pistons started up

ripped the head back off expecting to see carnnage but luckly the valves have only slightly fouled the pistons, u can see by the patten on the valves that they still spin which hopefully means the stems are not bent & the damage to the pistons seems pretty minimal - nothing that a dremel wont fix

[Mike]

Didn't think to do a compression test firsT?

[JD GTE]

turrned it over by hand quite a few times & you couldn't hear/feal it's hitting so asfar as we knew all was ok

[peteastra]

There's Gold in them there waterways.

[Mike]

Surely the thing to do would be to compression test it to find out if the compression ratio had been increased?

[JD GTE]

not really something you would have thought about though is it. as far as i knew the block was standared bar presurising the water system which lead me to belive the head was warped

[Mike]

right.. so you proabably wouldnt have got reliable results anyway then.

So what you gunna do about it?

[JD GTE]

basicaly doesn't seem to be that much damage , they only took off 0.2 mil so the 1.7mil Cometic gasket was ordered from SBD tday so that should raise the head back up enough to give enough clearence between the valves & pistons & then sit back & think how lucky i was not to have to replace 4 pistons & 8 valves

[Mike]

You may be lucky. The valves could still be bent even fractionally though so I'd test it once you get it back together again.

Good luck, Mike

#ed: You were unlikely to have to replace the pistons IMO, its the valves that I'd worry about

[JD GTE]

yer they don't look too bad & + valves aint that expensive really, they guy who is rebuilding the head rekons there only about 8quid each anyway

but fingers x there ok

[Mike]

Is it an XE? I can't really tell from the pics but if it is they are sodium filled jobbies - bit more green in other words

[JD GTE]

yer it's the C20XE

should be back on the road by the weekend hopefully