The winter rebuild has started
Turbo Mini Forums

Got me head off today

and here are the results:


Cylinder 2 that the water was coming out of appeared fine, though there was a bit of damage around the coolant hole towards no 1:


The coolant bit of the gasket and ring around 3 was knashered:


Fortunately theres no serious damage and everything looks fine down the bores

Whats causing this then? it was getting a bit hot recently (105deg max), and the gasket was about 1.5 years old but none of that is excessive

Did i manage to detonate it or something on that ring? There was a bit of it hanging off when i pulled the head

Im seriously thinking about dry decking just to improve on reliability

Now to find some money from somewhere....

No wonder it conked out on ya.

You running pure coolant?

Am i right in saying miglias use dry decking? Might be worth looking into.

Back once again like a renegade master

mmmm,

interesting, One thing I don't like with the BK450 is the size of those holes, also I'd line to see a copper support like in to outside 2 of that row.

could that be an option? drop in a copper washer? although getting the thickness right could be an issue.

I wouldn't bother going to the troubel of dry decking, not on an engien tat is alteady proven unless it was being rebuilt.

Maybe try a comtec (or similar) solid gasket on it?

I guess it could have been a bit of det that caused it, but i wouldnt have expected 1 and 3 to go together, as 1 should be cooler than 2&3?.

also whats this on no 3...

a red circle???


hahaha ill take a closer look

The same place that the gasket failed on The DON, from the waterways in the centre of the gasket.

Dry decking won't stop your gasket doing that...

but it will stop it finding its way to the coolant...

I'd investigate why thats happened... what do the piston look like?

AlexF

looking at the piston colour nic , id say thats got a bit hot and detonation has occured ,but something else that i thought of was could the head have lifted a bit ,when was it last torqued down ?
the whole heat saturation of the block could well be a lot more if you drove it there and could take it over the det threshold ,compared with trailoring it and having it a bit less toasty ?
on the other hand it was a cooler day by far than the shootout ,but then ,,, it was trailored hmm .
any chance of iffy fuel ?

Medusa + injection = too much torque for the dyno ..https://youtu.be/qg5o0_tJxYM

it was last torqued when i replaced the gasket, fri before avon 06..

The only other time i blew a head gasket is when i drove to avon too....

The psiton looks fine, there is a bit of damage you can see, but that happened ages ago when the end fell of a spark plug, grrrreat! The gasket has been changed since then

Actually robert you could be onto something there...the car was set up on optimax-98 octane, but this time i was on 97 texaco stuff, hmmmmm i couldnt say i heard any pinking or detonation but its not very quiet in there

That thing in the red dot is a spot of carbon, it doesnt look like it in the pics but it is

Im liking the idea of dry decking just to improve cooling circulation, and when the head gasket does inevitably go it wont mix the oil and water together, and looking at these pics the water seems to be effecting the gasket

Looks like the gung ho hi boost final run claimed the gasket then eh Nic??

yep, curses

Better a gasket than a piston though.

Unlucky mate.

Every day is a school day ...........

How fast and how expensive ...... the same question...

At least its spotted now rather than later m8

Nic ive heard the Tesco's stuff is better than the optimax?

To be fair Nic, I think that gasket has done you well, think how many 1/4 miles you've done at 'X' psi at full throttle, I bet thats a fair few miles..lol

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1/4mile in 13.2sec @ 111 terminal on 15psi

I seriously doubt it!

Is that standard tesco fuel or the 99RON stuff?

Have to say that doesn't sound to good. Do you think you could dig any more info on that.lol

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1/4mile in 13.2sec @ 111 terminal on 15psi

I will try Matty, but from experience BP Ultimate works best for me, Ive tried Tesco 99 and Optimax and the car physically felt slower then went slower on the 1/4 too. Thats not just in my car though, a friend came to Avon this year in his 1293cc (he didnt race it) but said it didnt feel right (he drove there on Optimax) he drove most of the way home then put BP Ultimate in and said it felt fantastic after that.
I know all cars differ but it is my experience and my friends.

Paul

I seriously doubt it!

the tesco's round here doesnt do the fancy 99ron stuff

I always used to run the car on bp ultimate, its the closest garage to me too, however now i dont find bp very reasonable on price

so now it runs on optimax most of the time. At mitp i was guesstimating the octance booster in it and i think i put too much in, in the afternoon and the car was running slower, but in the morning when i ran the 12 there wasnt very much in there at all. I suppose its just what the timing has been set up to run on, perhaps?

When racing alfas, one of me dads mates builds race spec, he uses tesco ultimate as he says it he can feel the difference.

Back once again like a renegade master

dry decking will not give you any improvement , it's a must when using alloy heads , but with both irons (head/block) you'll better keep it like this ,
this coolant passage doesn't seem to have affetcted the HG , what I see is a bog good det that have blowed your fire ring, then it did find his way to the water one,
what caused this is certainly mentioned earlier, a hot running, 105° is really to hot to contain det,or a bad tank of fuell
I would certainly investigate the ring land to see if it didn't been shot too. (I did find some pistons with a nice crown that have a ring land exploded in two)
A last thing that could have improved the scene ( :) Robert):
when it's get hot , the expantion pull your studs ( elongate them), when it does cooling it doesn't retract then, as a result, the clamping force have been lessened,a µthu each time.
the only way to recover it his to retorque your head after some numbers of heating/ cooling cycles cqsd

intersting what you say about fuel ic , on the way back from combe i was trolling along and at about 610 in top it went a bit flat ,couldnt hear anything knock wize but i think it was just going down on no 4 and that was with bp 97 octane ,,on optimax its fine .

Edited by robert on 12th Oct, 2007.

Medusa + injection = too much torque for the dyno ..https://youtu.be/qg5o0_tJxYM

Fuels are a bit of an odd subject.

My reasoning is you tune the car to whatever fuel your going to use keep using it.

My preference for Optimax is based on a simple fact ..... vertually all Shell garages have Optimax on the forecourt where as only about 50-60% of the BP garages have their Ultimate ... at least that is the case in this part of the country.

If I am going far afield I will either make sure I know where the Shell garages are on route or have fuel with me from home (always have at least 5 litres as I've had a fuel gague failure at the same time as a leak in the past .... quite embaressing).

Robert, 6100 in top on the way home!!!! Either you have just admitted to attempting the land speed record on the M4 or you need a higher final drive .. LOL
When I was on the way down to Bristol to pick up RobH I never saw over 4000 and shall we just say that I certainly wasn't the slowest thing on the motorway and felt the need to keep an eye on the mirrors for white cars ... LOL

Every day is a school day ...........

How fast and how expensive ...... the same question...

i had prety much the same problem as you nic, mine blew into number 4 cylinder ,was running 10psi boost and was just after it was dyno Dunno why it happened either but i just guessed that maybe it happened when we were dialing in the timing. Replaced it and hasnt happened since so i dunno.

oh and i use bp ultimate

1152cc turboed mini clubman, most powerful 1.1L a-series?

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oh well, live and learn

Though i wasnt running 105
deg up the strip, but my car had seen it earlier in the week when the earth for my fan vibrated loose and slowed it down

And for next year i think i may start retorqing the head every once in a while too then

Doesn't hurt to re-torque regualrly.

I've always checked the torque on my engines every time I have the rocker cover off to do the tappet clearences (which I tend to check quite often after having an adjusting screw come loose a few years back).

Also some people swear by re-torquing after a certain number of heat cycles on competition engines.

Are you going to drop the pistons out to check them?

Every day is a school day ...........

How fast and how expensive ...... the same question...