Yet another overheating P38

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I

itsbrokeagain

New Member
Posts
9
Location
Surrey
Hi All.

I thought I'd pick some collective brains before bowing to the (expensive) inevitable. I've had my P38 for 3 years - bought it because it had LPG and was on a 5000 mile old recon engine. Apart from everything else that's dropped off, needed replacing etc. it's run absolutely fine for the past 30,000 miles. About a month ago I went on a 600 mile round trip with no problems, the day after I got back, on 5 mile run, it boiled over.

No amount of bleeding stopped the problem so I dropped it off at my friendly independant. Swapped out the the rad, new water pump, thermostat, fixed my leaky heater core rings and still dumping coolant. They thought it was testing positive for exhaust gas so I asked them to strip the heads. Gasket looked fine, no obviously dropped liner or cracks so put back together again.

Ran fine for a couple of days and then boiled over :doh: Right, thinks I, I'll try some K Seal in case it's a minor block problem. That didn't work either. In fact I just opened the header tank after it's been standing for two days after it's latest misbehaviour and it spewed what was left of the coolant a foot into the air.

Anybody got any suggestions before I try to restart the economy buy buying another engine?

Cheers

Dave
 
hi dave does sound like new engine jobby k seal is not good flush it out try iron tite if that does it you know you got cracked block for sure but it will keep you going till you can get hold of one £30 e bay land rover say nothing wrong with blocks but sell iron tite to fix no problem if you try it please let us know i have it in mine just now
 
j the range said:
hi dave does sound like new engine jobby k seal is not good flush it out try iron tite if that does it you know you got cracked block for sure but it will keep you going till you can get hold of one £30 e bay land rover say nothing wrong with blocks but sell iron tite to fix no problem if you try it please let us know i have it in mine just now
Click to expand...

No, I don't like that answer. I'm after a more sort of rose-tinted "Simply jack the left hand side up by 17 inches, twiddle something that's not mentioned in any service manual and then re-bleed. Problem sorted"

I've ordered some irontite...:)

Dave
 
sorry mate i changed my h/g still the same so did it again just would not belive it son blew his top on me had to give in in the end dont forget let me know how it goes just do what it says on bottle. bottle says it lasts forever mine doing ok touch wood j
 
Thought it's about time I posted an update. I ordered the magic goo and when I was about to use it, a liner let go big time... Water just geysering out of the header tank.

All fixed now courtesy of Mr Turner's one-shot top-hat linered engine replacement. As of today my new least favourite new error message is "temperature gauge fail" after sending the gauge into the red. Nearly had a coronary.

Thanks for the advice

Dave
 
i wouldnt buy a none top hat linered engine to replace a knackered block. its the same engine as the original. dunno how they get away with it but alot do survive at least in the short ish term.

the one in mine survived over 165k miles, then gave up on ME, luckily i came across a top hat linered block(well a very good chap i know did) for £250 when i looked at it and compared it to the old one i remember thinking what an improvement!

the only way water can go now is through the heads and into the pots (obviously via the fire ring on h/g) and past the liners into the oil!! now theres no disasters there cos i'm a dab hand with the v8 now! well after having the engine in and out a few times!

at the newark show there was a fella selling alarms for the coolant system, a bit pricey for me but i'm sure a competant fella could design a circuit and leak it onto the web!!!
 
gavbriggs said:
i wouldnt buy a none top hat linered engine to replace a knackered block. its the same engine as the original. dunno how they get away with it but alot do survive at least in the short ish term.

the one in mine survived over 165k miles, then gave up on ME, luckily i came across a top hat linered block(well a very good chap i know did) for £250 when i looked at it and compared it to the old one i remember thinking what an improvement!

the only way water can go now is through the heads and into the pots (obviously via the fire ring on h/g) and past the liners into the oil!! now theres no disasters there cos i'm a dab hand with the v8 now! well after having the engine in and out a few times!

at the newark show there was a fella selling alarms for the coolant system, a bit pricey for me but i'm sure a competant fella could design a circuit and leak it onto the web!!!
Click to expand...

The main reason I bought this shed was it had just had a replacement engine. 40K miles later it went bang (standard liners). Funnily enough, I started playing with a coolant leak detection design last year (I've also got an Elise that has "issues" occaisionaly). The big problem is tapping a float sensor into both engines reliable so I was looking at sensing temperature differentials between the header tank and thermostat outlet. Not particulalry difficult or very expensive. If anybody is really interested I'll dig out my scribbles - shouldn't cost more than twenty or so quids for a beepy thing.

New engine is very shiny, shame the lpg is bu*****ing about.

Dave
 
you could do with watching the engine with a heat sensitive camera, find the hot spots and fit sensors there, i know it makes it a bit more complicated but with a bit of software it could be monitored on a pc/laptop or even integrated with a car pc system! or a small led display (traffic light style???) to monitor say 4 sensors!

the elise has the same engine as the old gaylander, so do caterhams and probably mg's i believe its the k series engine and the gaylander suffered from head gasket trouble too!
 
gavbriggs said:
i wouldnt buy a none top hat linered engine to replace a knackered block. its the same engine as the original. dunno how they get away with it but alot do survive at least in the short ish term.

the one in mine survived over 165k miles, then gave up on ME, luckily i came across a top hat linered block(well a very good chap i know did) for £250 when i looked at it and compared it to the old one i remember thinking what an improvement!

the only way water can go now is through the heads and into the pots (obviously via the fire ring on h/g) and past the liners into the oil!! now theres no disasters there cos i'm a dab hand with the v8 now! well after having the engine in and out a few times!

at the newark show there was a fella selling alarms for the coolant system, a bit pricey for me but i'm sure a competant fella could design a circuit and leak it onto the web!!!
Click to expand...

you can mention me name gav,i'm not shy yer know.:eek::D
 
The other thought was a simple capacitive sensor on the header tank. However I can't see through mine as it's totally opaque - if anybody has a spare I'm more than willing to have a play (especially if anybody knows where the level sits when hot and running!) I'm great fan of things that go "beep" but I'd be willing to add a blinky light as well.

The problem I have has with the Elise was the inlet manifold gasket sucking coolant into the manifiold; Just saving up an HGF for when I've got nothing better to do.... :)
 
oops must have upset him, he gone quiet!!!

mind you he is a vauxhall signum owner now, prolly hanging round the signum forums, i'll go check!
 
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