Plucking up the courage... Head gasket and cambelt

... found a couple of good photo walk through's on another forum, so now I'm just trying to get the courage together to give the Head Gasket and cambelt change a go on my 87, 2.5NA.

Cambelt looks ok, through the little hatch underneath, but I don't know when it was last changed, so think it's prudent to do anyway. And HG might be fine, aside from I'm losing top end power, and it's increasingly difficult to start when cold, so I suspect some loss of compression.

Any hits, tips, gotchas, gratefully received.

Ta-rah!

If you have the tools, then all you have to do is follow the destructions slowly and carefully, and you shouldn't go far wrong.

Make sure that everything you take off is kept in order, and keep your push rods in holes in a bit of cardboard and remember to number them.

Remember, one step at a time!

I've found that a loose injector or fuel feed pipe will cause your symptoms too - worth checking just in case.
Make sure you have a good breakfast before you start - the head is heavy!

Ta muchly all.

Got a decent set of tools, although none of the locking tools. I'm hoping everything will line up with the timing marks. Got Haynes book of lies to swot up on, and the workshop manual too.

Will check the fuel lines too, I have noticed a drip from the bottom of the fuel pump recently.

Ta,
Dobbs

you dont need locking tools head is easy just done mine cam belt is a bastard because of getting pully off and nut undune

Just did this on my 2.5. As said above, the harmonic balancer pulley is a right bastard to get off in some cases - i ended up using a 2-jaw pulley puller tog et it off, with the nut screwed out 5 or 6 turns to give space for the pulley to move.

When putting it back together do yourself a favor and coat the inside of the pulley and the crank nose with copperslip - you will thank yourself in 30K miles when you need to do it again.

On the compression loss - might be worth testing the compression before you rip its head off.

ajr

As others have said, be sure that you need to take the head off before you do it.

Removal and refitting of the head is surprisingly straight forward. I've sent you a link to the step by step guide that I used. I recommend a Payen gasket kit which has all the bits you need. You might as well do the valve seals whilst your there. Hardest bit is lifting the head away without breaking your back - it's heavy.

When I did mine, one of the pushrods was actually burnt where the gasket had failed.

When I did my timing belt on my 200 tdi which is the same engine, I had to buy a special puller to get the harmonic balancer off - it was a right pain. But the job itself was ok to do. My engine was on the garage floor at the time though - which helps.

My 2.5NA was a pain to start until I changed the injector pipes. The unions to the pump and injectors should only need nipping up slightly, if they need more than that, they are not sealing properly as they have been previously overtightened. Full set only costs about £10. Might be worth a go. Would do no harm to change the fuel leakoff pipes on the top of the engine at the same time.

mrchurchill109 said:

On the compression loss - might be worth testing the compression before you rip its head off.

Click to expand...

Ah yes, good point. I'm half thinking its best not to disturb the head if the HG doesn't need changing.

Blimey.. Compression testers 37 quid on flea bay. That's not bad - or are they all carp!?

dont put copper slip on shaft the bloody pullys got a habit of comming undune and shearing the end of the crank off ive seen it

Dobbs said:

... found a couple of good photo walk through's on another forum, so now I'm just trying to get the courage together to give the Head Gasket and cambelt change a go on my 87, 2.5NA.

Cambelt looks ok, through the little hatch underneath, but I don't know when it was last changed, so think it's prudent to do anyway. And HG might be fine, aside from I'm losing top end power, and it's increasingly difficult to start when cold, so I suspect some loss of compression.

Any hits, tips, gotchas, gratefully received.

Ta-rah!

Click to expand...

Any chance of sending me a link to the walkthrough please, or posting the link here for all to see?

Thankies

+1

This is the one I used. It's spot on.

2.5 N/A head gasket replacement - Land Rover Technical Archive - LR4x4 - The Land Rover Forum

Many thanks sp00k

So. timing belt completed last weekend. Turned out to be a relatively easy job. All the water pump bolts came out in one piece, the harmonic balancer just slipped off-probably because I'd already bought a puller just in case-and everything went back on ok.

Forgot to put the washers on the tensioner, but only realised after the cover and pulleys went back on, so that had to be stripped off to fit the washers.

Didn't have a dial torque wrench, so just used a clicky bar type and a reference point on the back of the case. The tensioner didn't move back any when the toque wrench clicked, so that was good to know.

The only weird thing I came across was that I've got the wrong type of flywheel. I'd bought the timing pointer to fit in the flywheel window, but when we turned the crank there were no timing marks on the flywheel, just the notch for the later pin type timing sets. Never mind.

So is she running yet?

My engine is away getting rebuilt and will be changing the timing belt when she comes back, good to know that it was an easy job.

Oldseadog said:

So is she running yet?

Click to expand...

Yep, done about 50 miles since. All seems well so far.

Well done!!

She should now run forever ... given a regular bit of TLC

I'm halfway through the job myself - having bought my 1985 90 2.5n/a diesel on eBay a couple of weeks ago and then overheated it on the way home. Should have the head off today.

What's the word with the hotspots? I'm hoping mine will stay in place and not show any sign of cracking but, if not, what's the part number and what's with these roll pins that I've read about but not seen? What does one do with them? Pictures would be great being a simple minded sort of soul.

I bought it for dirty jobs, a spare motor for when others are unavailable or not appropriate, an interesting project and for number one son to gain some driving experience in. At the moment, I'm the only one with oily fingers though!