lots of smoke.

[JS2004]

Aye mate im going to have a word with him on Monday.

 

NA-TT I could live with without too much impact on finances, NA-T.. I could see me getting carried away with it and spending too much.

[3LL]

Aye mate im going to have a word with him on Monday.

 

NA-TT I could live with without too much impact on finances, NA-T.. I could see me getting carried away with it and spending too much.

 

Either way you look at it mate this is an opportunity to better your current set up.. IF you can afford it I would say go for it.. If ultimately your gonna go the NA-T or TT route anyways, you may aswell do the lot now if it turns out its gonna be an expensive fix.. See wot Kilvo says

[Dnk]

A sniff test shouldnt cost very much, i'd have thought £20 would cover that but if your thinking its tt time then nows the time to do it

[JS2004]

First garage I spoke to said skim & test would be 90+VAT, perhaps he wasnt talking about the sniff test.

 

Yes I am thinking its TT time, but its either spend a bit to get the NA fixed, sell it, put money towards TT purchase.. or keep it and NA-TT it.

 

The problem with the fix is that as pointed out by a few people now, the cam journals would be out of line and theyd need doing too.

 

Fixing it could quite easily spiral cost-wise and id still have an NA at the end of the day.. which I love, but the TT is that little bit more special.

[Dnk]

Their on about skimming (re machining) the face of the cylinder head then pressure testing it. as said its no good doing that if its warped

 

A sniff test is done before you take anything apart, its basically a bottle of dye you fit onto where the rad cap would be, you run the car for a while and if theres any exhaust gas in the coolant the dye changes colour

[JS2004]

Righto, so sniff test it, get confirmation that its head gasket (have not even thought what to do if they say it isnt head gasket) and then look at options.

 

Best one at the moment that fits with where I originally planned to take the car is giving it to Keron and asking for it to go TT. That was I keep the rest of the car which I have been gradually doing work on.

[JS2004]

Mini update.

 

Ive now been bitten by the TT bug and seems very viable.

 

Took the car to a local garage today and the chap there had a look. We had it running. There is still white smoke coming out of the exhaust, not as much as when it first happened.

 

I had it idling and revving it a bit for approx 30 minutes, white smoke still but not clouds of the stuff. Had a look at the exhaust and water is coming out of it and was dripping. in the space of 30 minutes made a wet patch under the exhaust probably 10cm by 10 cm area wise.

 

Ive re-soldered the joints on the warning light PCB and now they light up properly when key in position II. they go off when the car is running as they should and I have had no more warning lights.

 

The oil pressure light that came on. I inspected the oil levels when cold and it was just past the F mark. After its been running for a while this seems to be over the F mark, off the flat bit of metal and onto the wire that holds the dipstick - so I suspect I put too much oil in..Going to remove some - and when I do ill compare its colour to see whats going on there.

 

We were going to do a compression test but because its an NA its fiddly due to the manifold going over the top of the plugs.

 

Plan at the moment.. run it for a while, take it out (not far) and blip the throttle in the lower gears see what it does.

 

If it does die on me, then its TT time... but if it doesnt die I dont really know what to do, supposed to be using it for a week off and driving around the UK a bit end of March - but now I have concerns over reliability. Dont want to get stranded in the lake district with it.

[JS2004]

Another update. Suspected I had overfilled oil and confirmed with visual dipstick check - it was over a cm over the F level so I feel quite the tool for managing to do that.

 

Drained a lot out, probably 2 litres or more and now the oil level is about 1/3 the way up the dipstick on cold. When warm there is no oil warning light until I slow right down and revs drop below 1k.

 

The upside to this is I now have no smoke.. despite trying my hardest to get some.. I have had it at 6K + revs in both first and second to try and get it to kick out smoke and nada.. so its quite possible that the overfilled oil has completely caused all that smoke despite it being white smoke (But it was at night). This would totally tie in with the oil pressure warning light illuminating when I had to have the car recovered.

 

Its sat outside cooling, will check in morning and properly top up oil by using the dipstick.

 

Now I need to decide what to do regarding the TT transplant I want - as this current engine appears to now be fine. An insurance quote for 3kmiles year, approx 280 bhp TT came up as 640ish fully comp with 500 excess.. so thats veryyyy tempting.. but i cant justify taking out an NA engine if its not broken.

 

Taking it on a much longer run out tomorrow to see if it is still solid or not. I suppose if this engine is okay it gives me time to shop around for a very low milage TT engine or even talk to Jurgen about getting one from Japan.

 

Would like to thank all for your help with this though, even if it has been caused by me being an overzealous plonker with the oil can