Bardi

Thanks for the tip. Cheers.

Cheers. Anyone know which carby hoses and fittings I can get rid of?

Yes I agree, the enthusiasm does dissipate from the job as you get older, but this recent experience has given me impetous to replace my old TD25 Navara's head gasket now. Cheers.

Yes time will tell but I'm pretty confident the other head is good given the excellent compression readings, and if the other intake gasket was damaged it would have shown at startup - also it's an intake gasket, not compression, so it won't be blown out. Maybe the previous owner/mechanic had the engine out of the car and still mega-stuffed up? All the hassle of jamming things into parts of the motor when it's out of the car to stop the crank turning when undoing or re-torqueing the crank sounded ridiculous and potentially harmful to me. That's what most people were advising online which seemed unnecessary, and proved to be in my experience. Much easier and logical to put it into fifth gear, eh? The only time consuming part of the job was getting rid of all the non-essential air-conditioning crud. Once that was done I had full access to all the timing belts area through the front, and to both heads from the side without having to even undo an engine mount. I'll be doing it the same way if I ever have to again, and probably in half the time you've mentioned it would take just to remove and refit the engine and line everything up again crawling right under the car to the engine and gearbox mounts. The heads are so light that you can hold them with one hand, unlike the heavier vertical engines, so I'll be leaving the engine in the car. So, my experience this time was quite good and easy, leaving out messing with the air-con crud which I'll never have to do again. Cheers.

6 Star - yes the constant bending over can be a bit tedious but I stretched it out over a few days. I'll take my chances with Murphy's Law because the compression tests on the other head were so good and even. The 3rd cylinder bolt not being tightened properly was the cause and problem. azdave - thanks, I'll have to do some more research as to which of the tangle of hoses and fittings I can remove if anyone else knows. The manual I have doesn't really identify all these pieces (valves?) and what their function is. Cheers.

I did quite a bit of research and youtubing and it all looked very laborious, and everyone removed the engine from the vehicle or lifted it while attached to the gearbox. I found that I didn't have to but I rigged up a pulley just in case. I recently bought a 1993 L Series Sportswagon and knew there was something wrong because the air filter was missing and the filter housing was oily and dripping somewhat from its drain hole at the front. The driver side PCV hose was breathing out oily air into the air filter housing. Later it developed an air and coolant problem back into the radiator overflow tank, and then milky oil in the PCV system. Head gasket. This was confirmed with a compression test of all cylinders - 1=135psi, 2=150psi, 3=75psi and 4=150psi. So I decided to replace the driver side head gasket. First problem was tackling all the congestion of hoses and fittings relating to the air-conditioner which I was never going to use, so I removed them all. Of course you've got to take the radiator out, the front grill bar, the bonnet catch for better access and the alternator and its shared brackets. The car seems like it was built around the air-con system. That was the biggest part of the job. Once the air-con stuff was out I removed the air-filter housing - that's another thing I want to make changes to, all those bloody hoses doing what? You have to have fingers like an octopus and eyes like a chameleon to see and get to them all. I labelled the less obvious ones for reconnection purposes later. After removing the housing I shoved some clean flanny shirt rag into the carby to keep stuff out. Then I freed the carby charcoal canister and power steering reservoir (drain it first) and put them out of the way. There are also brackets everywhere which need to be freed to move parts out of the way. Next was the clutch fan and crank pulley. I started taking all the front timing covers off and lined up the timing marks as per the book. I noticed that the flywheel marks are out by about 1cm when the cams are in the correct position. Someone hadn't put the last set of belts on properly. Now I removed the timing belts because they hadn't been replaced for over 200,000kms in 2006 - it now has just shy of 350,000kms on the clock. Here's where I couldn't understand where people recommended jamming things into the flywheel or stuffing 10 metres of nylon rope into a cylinder throught the spark plug hole to stop the engine turning. Why not just put the bloody thing into 5th gear with the hand brake on for back-up, and leaving the spark plugs in for a bit of compression assisting as well so that you can undo the crackshaft pulley nut without the engine moving? Why do things the hard way? I removed the 3 intake manifold bolts completely on the driver side and loosened the 3 passenger side ones a bit so that I could lift it a bit and shove a spacer under it to keep it up - driver side gasket would be cleaned and replaced. Next, undo the exhaust pipes where they bolt to the heads and jam a bit of wood in between the driver side pipe and the engine or whatever to keep it out of the way. So, with all the crud removed and other stuff out of the way I could remove the driver side camshaft cog, then remove the rocker cover, and then the camshaft housing. Be careful to watch, or have someone else watch, which rocker goes where if any of them fall out at this stage. Well, what a surprise - not! The work of the previous 'repairer' never failed to surprise me throughout this job. There was one of the head bolts (number 5 if you look at the manual's recommended tightening sequence) fully wound out and sticking out like the proverbial right next to the number 3 cylinder where the compression was just 75psi. This moron must have either not torqued it up properly or not done it up at all, but surely he/she would have seen that? Anyway off came the head and, low and behold, the head gasket had a big piece missing from it right next to where that bolt was. So, I did the usual clean up, replaced gaskets and o-rings while I could, reassembled (put some engine assembly grease on the rockers to keep them in place while re-fitting the camshaft housing, and also on the cam lobes for startup purposes) and torqued the parts in the opposite sequence and fit two new timing belts. Now I removed the spark plugs, took the car out of 5th gear and repositioned the flywheel to the correct timing. The belts were out by one tooth, so I removed them and re-aligned the cams to the correct setting and put the belts back on. This would no doubt mean re-timing the distributor later, which turned out to be more in advance by about 16 degrees than it should be. After putting everything back together without the air-con stuff and using the same bracket that was there for the alternator, but without the air-con compressor, I re-filled all the fluids and started her up and she ran like a beaut. I took her for a run, parked up over a large sheet of clean cardboard and no drips anywhere. So, if anyone tells you you have to remove the engine or lift it to change head gaskets, don't believe them. I would do the same for the passenger side head if I needed to. Anyone know which of the carby hoses and associated hardware I can get rid of? Cheers.