Ye olde Head Gasket (8v)

[gooddane66 at yahoo.com (Phil Boeye)]

'87 Scirocco 8v; 167K; head gasket w/ 23K

Would like to get some thoughts on my suspicions.

Been noticing a darkening of my coolant over the past
few months.  Kind of the thing at first you disregard
as perhaps it is just old, then start to look and say,
"hey, that ain't right".  Poured some out and yup,
nice gold-green-brown color and smells and is oily. 
Soooo...

Noticed too that the engine has run a bit warmer and
the coolant reservoir is lately getting
overpressurized (oil-coolant mixture will appear
around base of cap threads).

Those are the only symptoms.  No real drivability
issues whatsoever.  This leads me to think, crap, the
head might be warped.  Other possibility is the
standard oil cooler (new gasket and cleaned out also
about 23K ago).  I see no external leakage anywhere.

So - I yanked the head.  Given that I am in an
apartment and winter is approaching (although it has
been a very warm fall here in Virginia), I wanted to
get the work done JUST IN CASE.  Probably should have
done a compression test first.  But this is a beater
and well, so what.  

Going to take the head in for checkage and see how it
goes.  I really wanted to just get another year's
worth of drive out of this as much of it has been
mechanically rebuilt.  Turn around time for the head,
should it indeed be warped, will hopefully give me
time to get it back in and adjusted/running before the
cold fall rains (cue Guns & Butter).  

I am goint to post pics of the headgasket tomorrow as
I don't see any damage to it, but would like people's
observations.

 


		
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