Hi
Here are some pictures…link below…it’s quite a big page, under 3mb though. If anyone can tell me what the blistering around the waterways is in a couple of the shots I would appreciate it. It looks like bad news! Any comments as to the general state of play also appreciated. I mentioned in the previous thread that I could not feel a step in the bores.
Also, the oil you can see comes from me standing the head on it’s end for these pictures.
searchsmart.co.uk/car/head.htm
Many thanks!
Berni
Berni, The block face will almost certainly clean up OK, they always look horrible before you clean them.
On the head the blistering you refer to could just be corrosion or it could be where a previous welded repair has been (badly) done.
You need to thoroughly clean the head to assess the condition then any eroded waterways can be properly welded and the whole thing given a light skim to restore the mating surface.
Any decent engine shop would advise you. I got mine welded and skimmed locally and it was not expensive.
Berni,
That’s enough shots of the block and head. Now show the gasket allover on both sides please. The leaking spot will be most evident on the gasket. It only takes one small leak to the cooling system for it to all go haywire.
The blistering is a blossom of rust and black oxide. You must keep the Ph of the cooling fluid slightly alkaline or this type of corrosion damage happens everytime. Should have told you to buy the paper test strips for testing the Ph and an anti-freeze hydrometer. The hydrometer is not necessary if you flush the cooling system every two years faithfully like you should be doing.
The block and head probably need to be resurfaced to cleanup the compression ring lands. First check the surfaces for flatness. To be sure you can hand work the surfaces a with new mill smooth file to see if there is a perfect scratch-free, unpitted surface for the compression rings of the headgasket to seal against. Just lightly polish it with the file taking great care to not makes things worse by scratching it. ONLY use a new MILL SMOOTH file for this. Practice on a scrap piece of steel and aluminum first so you have a feel for the force required to polish or burnish with a file. You’ll have to do this anyways after you get the block and head back to get the surface finish to the 35Ra specification. Luckily I can look at a closeup picture and tell you if the finish is close enough from experience.
The good news it appears that this is a virgin engine and you’re the first to open it up. Measure the head thickness and report that back here.
A piston that has been run at the proper AFR and temperature will have a thin carbon black coating over about 1/2 the area of the top. The rest is covered with a brownish translucent glaze. Bet you’ve been only getting about 18-20 mpg from the looks of your inside bits.
You’ll probably find the pockets behind the rings are filled solid with carbon also. Don’t sweat it because the rings are probably worn too thin already and need replacing. Many times the pistons are still within tolerance but the harder rings are toast. Go figure! Mine was this way when the sleeve moved. I just installed a new set of rings and roughed up the cylinders walls a little and slapped it back together.
Do you see the thin spots just by the valves in the carbon desposits in the overlap area of the deck? That’s from the piston moving like it was slapping. Can’t tell if it’s too much or not. If it was not making an annoying noise then ignore it. The deck height is too much for sure to extract maximum power. On a race engine that would be a disaster.
Berni,
Look into the exhaust ports and you’ll see the stream of oil coming from the exhaust guides. That’s perfectly normal if you don’t have stem seals installed. That is the source of most of the blue smoke. There are no oil drain holes on the exhaust side of the camshaft gallery which makes matters worse.
If the intake guides are leaking a lot of oil then the piston tops will show evidence. Yours look okay.
Why don’t you take a picture of the trail oil of from an exhaust guide so folks can see it perhaps for the first time.
I already was reported to the California Smog authorities for smoking by a snitch. I think in my case it was for emitting black smoke from going WOT onto the freeway. I’ve stopped doing that but it’s a bummer to be forced to drive like an old lady. 
They offered me a pittance for my car so they could crush it into a ball. Luckily they can’t do a damn thing for now…but send me threatening letters. I got news for them, even some of the new cars emit black smoke at WOT with this horrible gasoline we’re forced to use. Next I bet they’re going to reformulate the gasoline again so this time a carburetor will not be able to atomize it. 
It’s only matter of time with this global warming issue looming…to keep them off my back I’m going to install a catalylic converter if it’s at all possible.
Berni
Nice page 
Took a while but I got the first few pictures to open.
From what I saw you have nothing to worry about, the brown crap in the waterways is rust, which is totally normal. Plonk the new gasket onto the block and look at the waterways, if the holes of the waterways are very close to the edges of the gasket or overlapping the gasket then it’s going to leak and you need to get it repaired. If the holes fit easily within the gasket holes then don’t worry about it.
Jason
I got the last pictures to open 
The block still looks ok.
I can see why you are worried, the head does look a bit damaged. Give it a clean up and hold a straight edge on the surface. I shine a light behind the straight edge and look for a gap, if you see a big gap then you need the head repaired and or skimmed. Or you could hunt around your tool box for a set of feeler gauges and measure the gap (I can never find mine). If you have a gap take it to an engine shop they will tell you if it needs repair, it maybe that just a skim will take out the dip in the material and you do not need a repair (TIG weld).
I have used a few engine shops in Essex before, if you cannot find one in your area (I think you are in Kent) Gosnays (Romford) Tel. 01708 740668 or T.K.Engineering (Dagenham) Ltd Tel: 020 8593 0416 both are very good.
You could give them a call and ask how much for a TIG weld and skim to get a rough idea of cost?
Hope this helps
Jason
Care to explain this Keith as I’m not sure what you are referrring to?(probably everyone else understands though!)
Martin,
It’s hard to tell exactly but I think the adjacient areas of the head have almost no carbon there either. It’s because the piston was just about kissing the head in those places. That’s bad to close the squish deck area completely to zero. Bad noises are heard at high revs. In this case I don’t think it was hitting but it makes me suspect the piston to cylinder wall clearance should be measured. Sometimes it’s better to not know these things and just bolt it back together and hope for the best.
Not having a ridge at the top of cylinder is encouraging enough so maybe Berni you should take a calculated risk and just slap it back together. As you can see pulling the head is not really difficult. If you don’t flog it might be okay for a good long while. Okay, you’re at the craps table and ready to roll…
Hi Berni,
It looks OK from what I can see. What are the bores like - Is there much of a ridge at the top of the bore?
There are 4 holes, from memory, in the oil scraper piston groves that feed oil back to the sump; it is very common that these end up being plugged with carbon deposits. Therefore oil tends to stay around the rings in much larger quantaties. This will give rise to two things - Higher than actual compression test results and buring oil.
However it is not something that happens overnight.
I would take the head and get it skimmer by 10 thou. and see if this is enough to redifine the oil and waterway passages. If not, then ask them to measure what level would need to be skimmed - then make your call.
As for the block I would just clean it up and then check the waterways with the head gasket just to see that there is no major overlap.
The bits around the waterways are just crud from the block - you can see from the head gasket that the waterways through the middle are very ristricted. There will be a dead spot at the far edges of the water way where there is no flow. Any debris will, over time, collect in these areas - so just clean them off.
Whilst you have got it apart I would remove one of the core plugs and run a hose through the block to try and clean out some of the rust and debris.
Good luck
Dave
Gee, I just noticed in the picture with the rust blossom the compression ring appears to have shifted away from the cylinder bore edge of the block. It’s hard to tell though where the bore begins since it’s pitch black dark. If that’s the case, that’s bad. The gasket might have been installed skew or it slid there. The two dowel pins to keep the headgasket aligned are a critical items to possess.
Huh?! Looks more like where the oily carbon deposits have been wiped away with a cloth to me…! 
As for the bubbly stuff around the edge of some of the waterway openings, that looks like either Araldite(!) or some of that ‘liquid metal’ repair stuff you can buy. Not good - maybe time for some welding, or another head ?
The rest of the stuff that is trying to block the openings looks like the usual corrosion products you get in ‘previously-owned’ engines…
That looks like some nasty pitting on the block between cylinders 1 & 2 (4th picture down) - maybe a block skim is needed too ?
Every time I ‘open up’ an engine, I find it amazing how well they tolerate wear & tear & abuse that some people inflict on them through poor (or no) repair. Even though they don’t go properly, they still manage to ‘go’ enough to make the car work!!
Matthew
Hi All
Many many thanks again for the help. Pictures of the gasket can be found below, and I will take a picture inside the exhaust ports as soon as I get a chance.
Does anyone know of a good engine shop near Beckenham (near Bromley/Croydon/Lewisham/Penge) ?
searchsmart.co.uk/car/gasket.htm
Thanks again
Berni
Berni,
There are three areas of discoloration across the compression rings caused by hot gas infiltrating. Probably that is the source of the exhaust gases in the coolant. It’s not conclusive though and you might still have a crack somewhere. If it is the gasket it’s a oneway leak. Any coolant that entered a cylinder would scour the carbon off and it would standout from the other cylinders like a sore thumb.
Try cleaning up the head and block with the mill smooth file. You have a 50/50 chance that everything will within the surface finish tolerance and no machining will be required.
Did you read the Payen technical powerpoint presentation on headgaskets I have in my online briefcase? The page on required surface finishes is extremely important to you right now. Get that wrong and it will surely leak again in another 3k miles.
Berni,
You had the copper pull into the very same headbolt hole where my engine leaks oil from. I had to butter RTV around the washer and head of the bolt to stop it from weeping oil out and getting it swept by the breeze onto the exhaust. This is inspite of me applying high temp RTV around the bolt, oil drainage and the water passage holes on the Felpro fiber headgasket. There was some sort of sealant used on yours too.
I might be able to explain why those water passages are made small like that. Look at my gasket pictures. Can you see what’s different? I wonder what gasket I was given afterall and for what engine? Look in the Payen AF880 headgasket folder. The part number on my gasket looks like it’s SAU202. I never noticed that before right now. 
http://briefcase.yahoo.com/[email protected]
Payen also makes a steel-reinforced fiber headgasket which I’ve never used before. Has anyone else go any experience there?
That piston is still in my engine. The top ring was bound up so I filed out the groove a smidgen and stuck it all back together. I roll those dice too Berni.
Berni,
My car is fitted with an Ajusa gasket part no F-2102A-34, bought from QED. It fitted like a glove
cheers
Mark
Well, it seems that “rebuilt” means “painted” to your PO. The paint does indeed look nice. Now that you know that, I suggest two options:
OPTION 1:
File surfaces smooth as recommended above, slap on a gasket, and go. Maybe fit a new water pump, but not one of the expensive ones. Someone will be back in here in the not-too-distant future, so a cassette won’t offer much value-add. Based on the sprocket wear, you might also consider a timing chain if it fits the wallet. An expensive item to have fail.
OPTION 2:
Rebuild while it’s open, because an 81,000 mile TwinCam can’t have too much further to go. This is going to be expensive because of the head work, but may be cheaper over the long haul if you want to get more than 10,000 miles out of it or want to experience the car the way it was intended to run.
If you choose option 1, you should be very attentive to signs of impending bottom end failure (Oil pressure, bad smoke, etc.) that will make your ultimate rebuild cost much larger. When they arise, bite the bullet before it breaks.
The good news I see here is that you have a fairly gently worn original engine. It may be close to worn out, but there’s nothing obviously awful in your pictures. That’s actually much better than having a botched rebuild to work with.
As far as the gasket is concerned, weren’t restricted flow gaskets a revision to correct a flow problem to the other side of the engine? There’s a thread either here or on the Europa site that speaks to this, and if my recollection is right, the gaskets that appear to be bad (like yours) are actually the good ones.
Doug Nicholls, 54/1822 Ma~
The picture of the battered piston clearly shows I was only getting 20mpg at that time from all the carbon buildup. With the help of the AFM and my study of the actual workings of a DCOE the carbon that is no longer a problem.
I think I’ve made another discovery of the true nature of why and how the carbie actually works. This stuff is not in any of the books. I’m scratching my head on how-to incorporate the instrumentation to measure this effect at this point. If I’m correct then tuning these things will be a rather no-brainer process. 
I think that’s correct.