Just been up savages house trying to get the XE conversion running, and that we did. After a triumphant stare at the engine ticking over we went for a drive round the block. One thing we noticed is coolant temp got low, and then much lower, also there was a misfire at low revs, kind like running on 3 cylinders so we returned to base for a poke around. I guessed the stat was fubar as it was rising in traffic, then getting very cool when moving, quick trip down to motor factor, pick up new stat, return back to the house.
We had the stat housing off and sure enough the old one was snapped, cool, positive diagnosis. Another trip round the block at steady pace revealed the coolant temp was stable but the misfire had now turned into a major tractor action, buhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuh pulling away. Back to base once again.
Next was a sniff around all the electrics to try and find the cause of the misfire, king lead was dodgy so we borrowed mine, but that didn’t fix it. Next we took the spark plug cover off, levered out spark lead 1 and FOOOOMPH face full of hot water, look down the plug hole to find more water boiling away round the plug base, levered off 2, 3, and 4, all were the same. All the coolant boiled dry after a few seconds, then we plugged it all back in and ran it up once again, it ran smooth as a babies bum. After a few minutes the misfire returned, turned the engine off again, spark plugs were all surrounded with water again. It definitely coolant because it smells (and tastes!) sweet, this is major bad news.
This engine has been sat out of service for multiple months I think rob mentioned 5. It was a runner before then. The only possible explanation I could think of was either cracked/porous head, but there’s no loss of power or cross contamination of fluids, cracked block, but it cant be cause it would be cylinder specific, and head gasket gone which is the most likely but still confusing as it would have to breach all 4 gasket partitions.
The head is coming off Tuesday, all comments welcome.
We had the stat housing off and sure enough the old one was snapped, cool, positive diagnosis. Another trip round the block at steady pace revealed the coolant temp was stable but the misfire had now turned into a major tractor action, buhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuh pulling away. Back to base once again.
Next was a sniff around all the electrics to try and find the cause of the misfire, king lead was dodgy so we borrowed mine, but that didn’t fix it. Next we took the spark plug cover off, levered out spark lead 1 and FOOOOMPH face full of hot water, look down the plug hole to find more water boiling away round the plug base, levered off 2, 3, and 4, all were the same. All the coolant boiled dry after a few seconds, then we plugged it all back in and ran it up once again, it ran smooth as a babies bum. After a few minutes the misfire returned, turned the engine off again, spark plugs were all surrounded with water again. It definitely coolant because it smells (and tastes!) sweet, this is major bad news.
This engine has been sat out of service for multiple months I think rob mentioned 5. It was a runner before then. The only possible explanation I could think of was either cracked/porous head, but there’s no loss of power or cross contamination of fluids, cracked block, but it cant be cause it would be cylinder specific, and head gasket gone which is the most likely but still confusing as it would have to breach all 4 gasket partitions.
The head is coming off Tuesday, all comments welcome.