freelander head

Hi,
Could anyone pleases advise me,I have a customer that requires a head for his 1800 petrol freelander,as these are very expensive to buy in sa i have managed to find a second hand one that has been pressure tested but has no valve guides they are missing for some unknown reason,it has also never been skimmed.What else should i look for would there be any other signs of damage.Appart from the obvious.Would any one out there use a second hand/recon head?
Thanks
Ryan

If the head checked out as ok I would personally use it provided it was pressure tested, skimmed and complete. The issue tends to be more with the gaskets / cooling than the actual heads as far as I am aware... I think there are some silly plastic bits that need replacing too if I remember. Remember to use new bolts too!

hang on there

be carefull with a rover head when its been skimmed as this can make for more probs,the long head bolts screw into the oil ladder on the bottom of the engine and they almost bottom out !!! so a skimmed head lets the bolts go in even more,this ford think could be part of the reason with them letting go again shortly afterwards,hence they are torqued up to the correct amount but all they are doing is bottoming out in the oil ladder .

Lots of guys have said that the head should not be skimmed but they didint know the reason why thanks for clearing that up.Is there anyway the cooling problem can be sorted as we live in Durban whith high temp.all year round this obviously does not help?

[email protected] said:

Lots of guys have said that the head should not be skimmed but they didint know the reason why thanks for clearing that up.Is there anyway the cooling problem can be sorted as we live in Durban whith high temp.all year round this obviously does not help?

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Does it have the remote thermostat installed? if not you may to install it to avoid thermal shock. If it does have, you may want to bypass small amount of coolant over the thermostat. I am actually doing a bypass for a mate 1.8L FL but we have got time to finish it off, prob in 2-3 weeks time we'll do it. I will let you know the outcomes but prob it would be too late for you...