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Hi Everyone,
I’m having some post-headgasket issues with my 1985 900T. Here’s the story.
About a month ago, I caught my car on the very early stages of headgasket failure. Since it was Christmas time, I was out of class, I decided to take on the task of my first HG replacement.
I replaced the headgasket, thermostat, oil, coolant, installed a fan switch inside the car so I could also toggle the fans as I needed, and repaired the block heater cord and replaced the starter (which was also on it’s last legs at the time).
Over the last two weeks, I’ve been doing little bits of the replacement. Once I had everything back together, two issues were apparent. At first I had oil leaking onto the exhaust manifold and coolant leaking. I traced this to be a poorly fitted valve cover gasket (my fault) which I replaced and the oil drips from the valve cover seem to have stopped. The coolant was leaking from the coolant return hose on the front of the head, which I replaced as well. Timing was way out, so last night I adjusted it according the Bently, to right around 16 degrees. I don’t know if it matters, but most of the repairs were done outside at home, and unfortunately it was below zero degrees C most of the time. (I had to dress warm!)
Other issues I’m now having are:
1) exhaust smell in the cabin. I’m guessing it’s probably either some residual oil burning off the exhaust manifold, or more likely an exhaust leak either at the exhaust manifold to head, exhaust manifold to turbo or exhaust bend to pipe junctions, but haven’t seen anything yet.
2) rough driving. Up to about 1750 RPM, the car runs very rough. It almost feels like the car is missing a cylinder. After 1750, the car feels normal (probably because things are moving much faster, it’s harder to notice? Power wise, I haven’t pushed the car hard yet to know if there’s a loss of power or not). The sound at idle is not uniform, more of an uneven sound to the engine. The car, even when warm occasionally stalls. I’ve checked the wires, and they all seem to be firmly attached. I’ll have to make sure the distributor cap didn’t get cracked in the cold too. Any ideas what could be causing this? One thing to mention, my brake booster diaphragm I believe has a small leak in it. Too bad because about 8 months ago, I replaced the very leaky one that was in there with what I thought was a better one. Opps. As a result, (before working on the headgasket) idle was a little wonky at times, and sometimes especially before the car is driven, the car would stall.
3) This morning, I woke up to start the car, I turned the key, lights turned on, but nothing happened. No sound, no turning over, nothing. I tried two more times with the same result. On the fourth try, the car fired right up, and although it was cold it did run after that. It was quite cold outside last night, and I didn’t plug the car in. The battery had good power though. Could this possibly be connected to the problem with missing a cylinder?
So, does anyone have any thoughts on what could be causing the rough driving, or the problems starting the car this morning? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for all the help, it sure made the HG replacement easier having TSN as a resource! Sorry for the terribly long post.
Ryan B
posted by 216.123.198...
, Wed, 15 Jan 2003 16:56:56, Wed, 15 Jan 2003 17:16:47
, Wed, 15 Jan 2003 17:19:29
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