Head Gasket Help!

hey,
last weekend i opened the oil filler cap and found every car owners nightmare, white sludge covering the rockers. i flushed the oil completely and replaced it with new oil on the off chance it was nothing (long shot i know)







now it comes back every two days or so. naturally i was not looking forward to what comes next, my dad said just to make sure get it compression tested. here are the results:

cylinder 1: 180
cylinder 2: 160
cylinder 3: 165
cylinder 4: 170

looking at other threads these seem like normaill figures which to me says that there is no problems with the head gasket. if anyone has any ideas or suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.

if it helps its a 1275cc with a stage 1 kit nothing fancy.

also if it does turn out that i have to change the head gasket are there any hints or tricks that i should know about?


cheers guys

Hi,

Put the same issues on forum last week, my mg engine had the sane white stuff on the rocker cover, rockers were slightly worse than yours, put a photo of them on this forum.
My figures were 1. 165
2. 155
3. 150
4. 170
Found that the gasket had blown between 2 and 3 cylinders.
But because my figures were a bit low i had the valves lapped in by Chris@smart and had the face skimmed just to make sure it was flat.
All ready to put back on.

I am a novice at this stuff, but managed to take the head off with no drama, good tip if you have an lcb fitted, remove the studs from the back of the head instead of removing the whole exhaust, worked for me, have put some new studs in afterwards as well.

Cheers Rob

head gasket was the first ever job i did on my mini, didnt know a thing about engines or cars, i used the haynes manual.
if you got one of them use it helped me.
jsut make sure you put all the push rods back in where they came out. so use a card board box lable it cylinder 1-4 and then poke two holes in for each cylinder and use this to help you rember where they came out from
make sure everything is touqued up correctly and in the correct order.
also make sure you check and correct the gap of the valve.

How many miles a day does the car do? - if less than 15 each way, the oil does not get up to temperature enough to evapourate the water condensation in the oil. Does the car drive ok? -if yes: take it for a 2 hr drive then check the rocker cover.
I owuldn't go jumping in changing the head gasket straight away

Ryan

Edited by L400RAS, 10 March 2010 - 05:40 PM.

the problem is you can't fully rely on compression tests to diagnose a head gasket failure.

If the gasket has failed between two cylinders then your comp normally be down but you will not get emulsified oil. This only happens when oil and water mix, the head gasket can fail between an oil gallery and water gallery and cause the problem you have above.

Have you checked the coolant?

If so what is it like?

Ok cheers guys, I also forgot to add I'm loosing alot of water withe no visable leaks. I'm topping it up about twice a week now. But the coolant seems to be clear enough. Also when I pull the dip stick the oil is near enough clean with no signs of Mayo. It's bizzar honeslty boys

Hmmm, sounds more like head gasket to me, as said you can get a fail between the galleries so a comp test would be ok. That looks like a lot of mayo to be caused by short runs.

It looks like a head gasket between oil and water. The reason it seems to lose water is because after you switch off, the oil pressure goes, but the cooling system still has pressure, so water is flowing into the oil - hence the emulsification. You will probably find a bit of oily sludge in the cooling system, so flush that out when you do the gasket change.