OT polo headgasket probelm... (fixed)
Turbo Mini Forums

thought i would ask on here as we all know other forums can be useles at giving good info, the polo forum dosnt seem to be much cop neither.

basically here are a few symptoms:

running like shit on idle
smoking (looks more like white water vapour than oil) badly on idle, and when running on a motorway it produces random big white clouds.
running hot.
water was low but to be honest i cant add this to the equasion as follishly i hadnt checked it before.

cause may be it got rather hot the other day and has been like this since.

heres a vid of the smoke (car is fully warmed and has just done a good journey):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqlj3EYsXWo

now my theory is that it may have blown the gasket between a waterway and a cylinder, causing these symptoms. is this a safe assumption before i take the head off and skim it all up and slap a gasket on?

cheers for the help.

Edited by Rick.SPI on 21st Nov, 2010.

First thing i can say to you.

Find a friend with a compression tested and give it a shot to see what occurs.

White smoke fro. Exhaust whilw hot normally head gasket

for some reason when i blew the hg on the pug all compression was normal. But the coolent smelt like ahit and had some oil in, tbh when it comes to skimming i would do it anyway just to be safe only costs about 30 pounds to do .

Will you be carrying out the job your self?

P

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cause may be it got rather hot the other day and has been like this since.

the symptoms you give overheating etc........ would suggest you go for the headgasket, i would, check for oil in the water also water in the oil, my monies its blown between ....from the water way to the cylinder............. is there gas bubbles in the header tank ?

there may not be..... as the water could be going into the cylinder .....and maybe visa versa ?

it may be only blown a tad but it will only get worse!

theres only one cause of action and its not plesant doing it outside

good luck

I'll get on the compression test and see what's what. Erm theres no water in oil or vice versa. I will be attempting to do it myself as it's a simple engine. Will definitly be working out and skimming a fair tad off it as a while it's off type thing. Just trying to think what else it could possibly be but can't really think of anything. Cheers for the advice I'll keep you updated :)

on this one i doubt the Ct will show anything ? ........ but give it a wirl

get wraped up big time ....Good luck

bubbling in the header well. consumed 6ltrs of water today 3 for to and from work, and 3 for a trip to kettering to get the headgasket set and bolts. not going to bother with the comp test just going to jump in. cant wait :(

well all stripped and changed over now, running fine again.

it had a lot of oil/water mixture in no1 piston:



and the head looked like this before i cleaned it:



luckily the head had no distortion or warpage what so ever, i used a accurate skimmed staight edge and a feeler guage, couldnt even get the 1.5 thou feeler under the straight edje and no light to be seen whatsoever, luckily it all cleaned up very well.

heres the gasket:





looks as if the gasket has just failed due to being 20 years old, i think the desighn of it didnt help as if you look closely the waterways are tragle shaped and quite large wheras the gasket had small circular holes with couldnt have helped anything and in my mind makes me wonder if this is why it failed prematurly, the new gasket was different and actually sported the right cutouts.

i think id prefur to do mini headgaskets in the future tho, theres a lot less to a 5 port mini head haha :)

anyway we now have a polo that idles, dosnt overheat, dosnt smoke, dosnt need a drink all the time and dosnt produce maynaise. :)



cheers for all the advice evryone.

Edited by Rick.SPI on 21st Nov, 2010.

Have you compared the polo gasket to a mini one?

It's not even close. Although they are very close cc wise the polo has a shorter stroke and larger pistons. And the offset is different. So not a good head for the a series.