Head gaskets -POP!
Turbo Mini Forums

Damn it, i think my gasket has popped on cylinder #3 - under load it starts doing the 2/3 cylinder thing....
Willing to have some guesses on where its gone through?
I'm going to get the head of asap to check it. - can you get the turbo unit and all the manifold stuff out cleanly with the block still in the car? I've got a good big box and it looks like it might clear it all the way around....
At idle, if you take the plug caps off 1 by one, then all cylinders except cylinder3 have an effect, it hasnt sounded at all rough, and there are no nasty clonking sounds, its just not firing on cylinder 3. (spark is there of course!)

Arse.
Any advice greatfully received,
Edwin.

might be worth doing a compression check before taking the head off

Yep, just have, and errrrrr..... Confession time.
All cylinders spot on.
Confused at this point.... very confused.
hmm. spark from dizzy all top banana. timing? tick.
no rotor problems. Check valve clearances. dead right.

Yet the bloody thing wont take any load, but idles ok.

At this point i was pondering, and was listening to it idling...
occasionally it would perk up, then sound a little rough. Got hold of plug lead for #3, and pull the cap *partially off*. Instantly sounds perky.
A major wtf moment later, and i've had the plug out and inspected it. Sod it, swapeed for a new one and hey presto, instant perfect running.

The plug was nicely coloured with no cracking.

Can plugs go *soft* internally?

Oh, and whats the best tested plug gap for turbos? i'm using the standard metro setting atm, anyone tried others?

(blasts happily off into the sunset to try to warm up the oil to get rid of the mayo which had made me suspicious. One long run over snake pass and its *all* gone. been very cold recently)

just a guess but could it be the ignition amplifyer, the little black box on your dizzy. Maybe thats why its ok at idle but not under load. Other than that maybe a vacuum leak?

try a new set of sparkplugs. happened to me with 2 sets of teh v-grooved NGK's. the "cheap" ones never gave any bother thou.

on cylinder 3 funnily enough. and usualy from a cold start.

Edited by evolotion on 24th Jan, 2005.

turbo 16v k-series 11.9@118.9 :)

Denis O'Brien.

i killed lots of sets of V-grooves to!

Oddly enough, these are v-grooves as well.
Ignition amp fine, and just changing that spark plug FIXED the whole lot!
You think that V-grooves might not be up to the high in-bore temps that turbos can get?