head gasket gone

just wondering yhe head gasket on my 1.8 has just gone how easy is it to do this myself as i normally would send it away but seen as i am doing the rest of the car thought it wont hurt to have a look at the inside of the engine myself

but just wondering how hard it will be and will the head need to be skimmed

I've done a few head gaskets before but none on this type of engine. In my experience as long as the engine did not overheat then your head should not be warped and as long as you give both matting serfaces a really good clean and degrease you shouldn't have any problems.

I would also buy new bolts and make sure you pay extra attention to getting the correct torque level on each one in the correct order.

If you do end up getting your head skimmed then make sure you get the correct thickness of head gasket, sometimes refered to as repair gaskets.

excellent cheers for that am gonna see how i go on with it as i want to learn as much as i can i know a lot of the general stuff in the engine bay but never been into an engine.

But as if by some luck the gearbox gave out on the works van and the recovery just happened to be very knowledgable of the engine and said if i am not going to get to it straight away to drain the oil out of the sump put the plug back in and then fill it with desiel so as to stop the pistons rusting in, so think i might do this so that i can concentrate on the body once again so that i can get it off to paint and do the enginge while it is away.

Are you absolutely sure that it's the head gasket? What are your symptoms? I only ask as I know a guy who changed the head gasket when it was the oil cooler that was at fault….  :redfaced:

i know this has gone

the classic white cream over the filler cap
the empty header tank
and the sound of a vacum right as i realised it had done it

Just as long as you're sure.

There are some real idiots out there and I've proven in the past that I'm one of them!

What symptoms to oil cooler failure have apart from raising the temp of the oil?

My header tank was full of oil! Had a bit of cream on the filler cap too.

as to one above think i may be wrong to was looking over it before i started to strip down started the engine and while it was running found a water hose that had come of so reconnected and refilled cooling system and that stayed full

also cream on cap has cleared have a feeling that i has had cheap crap oil in it and the moisture in it has burned off slowly

although stil gotta open the enginge anyway as it is knocking like mad :dontknow:

but time will tell