mickeyw

Zeus have been making brake calipers for various classics, as well as a huge number of London taxis for years. I would think they know their business well enough to be trusted

7-core trailer lighting cable seems to come in two sizes - I usually buy the heavier one. I have seen some trailer brake lights pulse dim when indicators are on, so I always assumed this was caused by inadequate capacity on the earth wire.

Well, a trip to the local machine shop on Friday saw me coming home with two flat faced heads and an empty pocket. Job was done by a chap well past retiring age, and with a real old skool horizontal mill (sorry I didn't take any pics in there). He runs a while you wait service and was only 5 minutes from home, so I kinda justified the £100 bill to myself that way. Both heads were a little out, but the leaky one wasn't the worst. End to centre to end saw only 0.004" TIR, but the heavily indented areas between each end chamber and its neighbouring took just over 0.005" to clean up. This evening's activity has involved more valve lapping, a thorough clean of all the threaded holes and general readying for refitting the valves. I also have one exhaust manifold thread to Helicoil tomorrow.

My thoughts too. OK it may depend how much needs doing, but like Fridge says, they are nice simple engines. If you need lots done, it'll still cost a fair bit...

Function over form. It's underneath remember...

Wait for the cries of fit an LSx

He was, but I think he may have changed direction. A quick Google "audi v8 aragorn site:lr4x4.com" will produce links to many of his topics.

<stunned silence>...

Barry - no pictures for very obvious reasons - still not found that hot female mechanic Welcome to the forum Woody.

Well as I said - the second head didn't look any better than the first. I did find that the gasket appears to be coming apart though, it's like this on 3 cylinders. +0.020" pistons - seems it has been rebored before Tappets haven't taken on the all-too-frequently found dished end.

Rung up a local engine machining place this morning - he wants £50 per head for a skim!

Well just like RNP, I had a knackered door hinge that I thought I'd experiment with prior to binning it. Since the original photos have disappeared from this post I've taken plenty In principle I have done just the same, but looked at the greasing slightly differently. The socket head cap screws I bought were M8 x 80 long 12.9 grade, so unlikely to wear any time soon. I drilled the holes out, taping the lower part M8, then drilling the middle and top to Ø7.9. In reality the centre part was worn so oval that it only just cleaned up. The original hinge pin I drifted out was not worn much at all, and I suspect future wear will again manifest itself in this hole, thus limiting further rebuild options, but this should last quite a while I hope. I also had a lot of vertical slack to take up, just over 1mm it turned out after I filed the surfaces to tidy them up. I turned up some plastic washers from black Acetal, O.D.14.0 and I.D.8.0, and 1.0 thick. Screw with 10mm chopped off its length and the plastic washer My take on lubrication was inspired by the grease gun used for sprocket tip chain saw bars. There is a 3mm hole each side of the bar, and you use a pointy nosed grease gun. I drilled the back of the hinge Ø3mm to break into the hinge pin hole. This location should be quite well shielded from the elements, and the jet wash. A mistake I learned here. I should have drilled the hole perpendicular to the surface. The oval hole doesn't seal at all well on the grease gun tip. I now know for the next one. The top of the hinge is not flat, so needed filing down so the cap screw sits against a level surface. This picture shows a little more filing needed. The almost finished assembly. When assembled, there is insufficient clearance to squirt grease in. I think either a wee bit more clearance is required, or maybe some small flats on the screw diameter. I shall experiment further...

The tank brand will likely be Stako. Not sure about threads though. Give Tinley Tech a call, they will know for sure. Those are F big tanks, don't think many will be able to accommodate them. However I shall enquire with a man I know who runs 4.6 Defender 6 wheelers

So for that kinda £, it's worth doing. The gasket kit cost more... With my normal rate of project progress I do need this engine to last until I remove it, not just for 6 months Got the second head off last night and found similar to the first regarding surface conditions. I'll post some pictures later. I watched your video link Barry. Apart from being a rough surface, that probably gives a pretty flat result. If one were to finish with finer paper...

What is a reasonable price to pay for a head skim these days?

Had a bit of a clean up of head #1 last night. Drill with wire brush to the combustion chambers, bit of lapping of valves with fine paste, clean up of gasket face and so on. There seemed to be a fine layer of clear varnish on the face of the head, like a really thin layer of silicon. Hope to gawd it wasn't! It lifted off easily with a gasket scraper. The pitting to cylinder #1 is quite notable. I believe the chap I bought this from had been driving with this gasket leak for quite some time, and probably without understanding what was going on. Whoever last cleaned the face of this head used some very coarse abrasive. Note the deep scratches in the surface. I used 320 grit paper wrapped around a large steel parallel, and lubricated with WD40. This relatively polished the surface compared to the house brick marks already there. After my cleaning there were still witness marks from the tin gasket between the chambers. (This is cyls 1 & 3). Holding a straight edge over them makes the irregularity look scary, although in reality it seems to be less than a thou' Between 5 and 7 looks worse but again the marking aren't actually THAT deep. Given the undulations and the confidence of posters above, I feel composite gaskets stand a better chance of coping with sealing than tin ones. The valve lapping went pretty well. The inlets were pretty good anyway, and the exhausts seemed to clean up with less effort than I had expected. Use of my Gunsons Eezilap helped.

My 110 has a 3.5 15G engine, that is in need of a little attention due to a suspected head gasket failure. Symptoms are a splutter on start-up that soon clears, a really badly corroded plug in no.1 cylinder, moderate water consumption and it pressurises the cooling system very soon after start. Other than that it run really smoothly with no tappet or other rattles, doesn’t seem low on power (this is only a 114bhp version), and doesn’t overheat. It is painted that lovely duck egg blue that is used on military engines, and carries a plate saying it was remanufactured for ABRO, back in 1997. Since then it has done around 75k miles, according to the paper trail that came with the truck. I’ve removed the head on the odd numbered bank, and there is a light amount of coke, but no obvious signs of the tin gasket having failed. No steam cleaned piston either, although tbh the water leak wasn’t that bad, however I wanted to rectify things before it became a reliability problem. Having degreased the head I removed the valves. The inlets look fine, but the exhausts are quite burned. These valve pics are after I had cleaned them of crud and coke. The rocker gear looks in excellent shape with very little wear to the rocker pads or valve ends. Even the hydraulic tappet faces look near new, and the cam lobes look quite unworn. Now before someone says why bother with this lower output engine? I shall just mention that it is intended to fix this up and run it until I get the 3.9 that is waiting in the wings ready for fitting. One concern I have is that having bought a head gasket set (a composite set) is that replacing the tin gasket with the thicker composite one is going to drop the compression even lower than the already low 8.13:1. I cannot see evidence (machining marks) that the head has been skimmed previously. I did find that the rocker posts have shims under them (1.20mm). I’ve never found these shims in any V8 I've opened up before, although I am aware they exist and the fact that they are used to adjust tappet preloads. But what might their presence indicate? Previous skimming of something, or not necessarily? So, points I’d like confirmation of – If I fitted a composite gasket, it would affect the rocker preload, thus requiring a change of rocker post shims? From various reading there is approx. 0.5mm difference in gasket thickness (tin vs comp) when compressed. From a perspective of a quick budget fix I would be better of using tin gaskets again, rather than suffer a loss of compression ratio, and/or need to machine any faces to compensate? The exhaust ports and valves need some attention, but I don’t really want to spend on having them refaced, so could I get away with some heavy lapping? From past experience this degree of lapping can take quite some time Your collective knowledge and expertise are welcome gents.

I have found military surplus dealers such as PA Blanchland to be good sources for new old stock early 90/110 parts. I found them by Googling old part numbers. May be of use to use?

Duplicate post

After making some repairs to my early 110 I was in the market for some brushable Trident Green. This colour seems not to be in the Spare paints range, but I ended up with coach enamel from Craftmaster paints. Ordered online and it arrived next day, well packaged. I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the paint and how well it covers.

I went down that route with my V8 90, and it did make a difference, although it didn't make it as light as I would have liked My knee suffers with the clutch in heavy traffic, or a day's off roading, so lighter is better. When I stuck the auto box in the 90, I kept the sprung assisted pedal (in storage, not in the car, ), and that is what I have stuck in the 110. The pedal assembly has been refurbished, and re-lubed etc to ensure optimum function. The servo will be complementing this. If it is too light to function well I can always add a spring, or even take off the assist spring. You're right that the diesel clutches do feel a fair bit heavier at the pedal than the V8. My all time heavy LR clutch has to be the 2.5Td & LT77 combo, although I found the Td5 heavier than the V8 too.

If the Defender stick is too long for you, swap the box for a Disco one, with its shorter stick. You'd need the closer position this affords the driver to be able to reach it anyway.

I have one like the Draper item linked to. Couldn't figure out a way to use it on V8 heads. I resorted to more primitive methods.

Well I ordered a 2.3:1 Powertune servo from MGServices Heathrow. They have a shop on fleabay. It arrived on Thursday, unfortunately the box looks like someone played footy with it, and the plastic air valve cover is broken . A quick email to the supplier has seen a replacement cover being put in the post. The unit looks nicely made, and comes with mounting brackets, a length of vacuum hose and spring hose clips, length of 3/16" steel brake hose with the tube nuts and flares ready made. There are two NRVs included, one straight and one right-angled, catering for varying mounting options. The clutch pipes are 1/4", and I am mindful that using smaller pipe for clutch operation may impact return speeds, so I will continue this size through the servo cylinder, instead of the supplied 3/16". The ports in the cylinder look larger dia than the bore of the 3/16" pipe, so I don't think they will restrict the flow. I have a couple of 3/16" male to 1/4" female adapters, relieved from old clutch master cyls. This will enable connection of the larger bore pipe.

I normally stick a little grease in each cup as I assemble the UJ, with grease nipple removed. This lets the factory grease out, then just refit the nipple.