128,000 miles
Got coolant dripping of the right rear of the engine. Heater hoses at firewall are dry. Is it time to look for a head gasket leak?

Any voodoo magic to doing head gaskets on Disco 1's?

 

Either upper valley pan gasket, thermostat gasket, throttle body heater plate, upper radiator hose at thermostat housing, or yes a HG. All the other stuff = would leak down into the valley & then seep out the back and down the engine/bell housing area. If you lay across the plenum and look down below the coil packs and see coolant chances are the leak is from something up top. If it's dry then chances are it's an externally leaking HG.

HG's aren't hard to do if your mechanically inclined. Pretty much just like any other V8 HG job out there. Key to a sucessful HG job = clean mating surfaces, and getting the torque sequence right (15FT LB, 20min wait, first 90 turn, wait 20min, then final 90 turn). With TTY bolts it is key to get that correct!

 

I fear I will have that soon as I just noticed the front of my pan valley gasket started crumbling - may not be crumbling over the part of the manifold intake yet but sure it will get there soon

 

great info, especially on the torque specs, thank you!
I had been planning a valley pan and valve cover gaskets so Hopefully its valley pan at worst.

 

Well once you get all the upper stuff off to replace the valley pan gasket you might as well just do the HG job. At that point it's just removing the front accessories, the valve cover gaskets, rocker arms, push rods, head bolts, and finally the heads.

I just did the HG's on my 97 XD and had I not had 1,000,000,000,000,000 interruptions I'd have had it pretty much back together in one day. I also spent more time cleaning all the parts vs the actual HG job itself. The years and years of leaky valve cover gaskets left me with a thick crusty goo on everything.

 

yeah I have the thorough layer of oil goop from 22 yrs of valve cover leaks also.

what about getting the heads decked?

a friend of mine has one of those fancy fiber optic camera's - gonna try and get that back there and see if we can tell where its actually coming from. I tried looking down behind it and cant tell the diff between oil or coolant with everything in the way.

 

I looked at the valley pan gasket I have. I dont see how any coolant would run through it?
......yeah, Ill just go fill out my TPS reports now....

 

That would be great.

 

yes!!!!!!!!, someone got that!

 

you have my stapler