All hoses bulging and oozing coolant. Looks like a dropped liner after all. Gutted. Wagon-R it is then. Turner Engineering for the new engine?

It's mainly a height thing, the high seating is key. I'll have a look around. Thanks everybody.

Wow, that is spooky. I have exactly that and only noticed it yesterday. If the misfire turns out to be a duff plug and the water loss due to that I'll be a very happy bunny... Thank very, very much. I'll check the condenser drains too.

Thing is I need the car to take my Mum to medical appointments. That means I need it out of commission for the shortest possible time. While stripping it gives me an answer it leaves it off the road in the worst case scenario. Building my own engine as I mentioned earlier or buying a...

If someone local and reputable has offered me a new short engine, fully rebuilt with top hat liners, fully fitted with LPG reinstated for £4,250 does that sound reasonable or pricey?

I think I might build a new engine so I can take my time and still use the car... what's the best way to go about that in terms of new/reconditioned/remanufactured parts?

Thanks for the encouragement everybody, I'm feeling more optimistic now. Off to search for a set of gaskets made of carbon fibre, Kevlar and angel tears... like I do!

Oh. If it wasn't LPG I'd have a go at using RAVE to do the job myself. As it has a nest of extra pipes with high pressure gas inside all over the top I'm looking at a big bill for someone else to do it... or just sell it. :mad: Bugger... I'm really quite fond of it.

You're thinking duff plug so check this before more drastic action? I'll do that, cheers.

Okay so I've fixed all the MoT Test failures. Misfire on startup, clears < 1min. I am losing coolant to the point I have to top it up once a week. I know I have oil coming out of the valley gasket too but the leak is tiny... if messy. Slight tappet noise I can get fixed at the same time...

Doh!

And no worries when you're done... just cut them off... nice. Didn't know you could get them this long but a quick Google shows you can... cool. No mention of any of this in the workshop manual as not needed for stock damper, but here for posterity now!

Got it done in the end, once it was trapped in that U-shaped slot I levered back a bit to line up the hole and tapped the bolt through. I bloody ache from all the failed attempts :D Pretty satisfying now it's done though.

I am a fat typist with pipe cleaners for arms.

You can't feel it from behind the wheel TBH. I could JUST compress it 3-4 inches by hand and it reached full length again in 6-7 seconds. Mounted it to the Drag Link first then used my hip to shove on the thick end and pop it into the slot in the chassis before it got too long. Cue barrage of...

Okay found it... think I'm going to get flack for this but the truth is the truth... I have B6 dampers on the suspension and love them so this made sense to me... DA1061 | Steering Damper - Bilstein B6 Gas As Wammers will no doubt confirm I'm a bit of an upgrade tart, if I'm shedding blood...

Bilstein. Can't remember from whom, I'll have a dig through my GMail and let you know if I find it.

Something amiss then.

Maybe just stiff because it's new? I was surprised when it extended... you would think it would make the steering pull to the right. The fact you can move it by hand sounds odd too... then again if I understand it correctly its not about a constant force it's about flow... a fluid flowing...

OK, cool. Think we have some somewhere... quite wide ones though. There are 1" ones on Amazon Prime... might buy a set just in case. Cheers.