so the head is finaly off...

[donalson]

well i finaly had time and day light to burn and found the hidden bolt that needed to be removed so i could remove the timing chain back plate and get to the front bolts.

the weird thing about it is i don't see any visable brake in the head gasket... but compression is WAY off on 2 of my cyl (2 and 4 i think it was... both where over 30psi off)... so i'm wondering now if it's a valve issue or something like that?

i'll post pics in a min... any help would be awesome as i don't want to get this back together and find out the engine is trash

mark

[donalson]

http://www.geocities.com/mr2donalson/grandam/

pics... note the crack in the head... but i think that should at most cause an oil leak not a coolant leak...

compression was something along the lines of 160, 127, 158, 134

(don't rember if that was the order but i do rember the 2 off compressions where odd to each other)

the bore's look nice n clean still have the cross hatches in them, so what am i lookin at for a repair now?... i'm considering just finding a good running 16v, swaping it in and dealing w/ the electronics (would the SOHC tranny work w/ the 16v's?)


sorry for rambeling... it's just nothing that i expected to see :-/

mark

[graden]

the crack in the head might not be why your getting a coolint leak... remeber .. those heads are cheep crappy metal. It might have warped and is not true and flush with the block any more.
once it gets to that point , no gaskets in the world can stop the coolint leaks

[4kQuad]

Crack in the head will let water seap out till the metal gets hot, then it expands and the water leak stops till the head get cold again.

A crack in the head could also expalin the low compression. For compression to work there can't be anywhere for the compressed air to go, A crake in the head is a place for it to leak from.

Mine had a cracked head, I drove it that way. It kept running so I kept driving. but on real cold days the water would turn to steam and seap out the crak in the head.....Man what a cloud. Well till the head got hot and it closed off. The first time it did it.... I thought it was toast. But it kept going and so did I till I left the resivor cap off and over heated it. I killed it so I had it rebuilt and drove it a little over 25,000 with no motor problems.