Hello i need a bit of help i recently replaced the head gaskets on my 1999 discovery 1. (you wouldnt believe the oil/carbon crud under valve covers and on the heads) To reach the rear head bolt on the drivers side i had to remove the master brake cylinder and the brake servo behind it which i didn't want to do for fear of this very scenario, but it was the only position to gain access to the head bolt in order to avoid stripping it.

After reassembling everything i am having an issue with the brake servo connector pin that binds the brake petal to the servo. The pin wont fit into the brake petal housing without moving the actual brake petal down slightly. Moving the petal down to put the pin through causes the brake lights to stay on constantly even without pushing the petal. The nuts holding the servo onto the firewall are tight. The brake lights function normally without being connected with the pin to the servo. I'm wondering is there any way to adjust the travel distance of the servo to get the pin back in its original place ?

I'm kind of tempted to just put maybe a slightly smaller bolt though it and a couple of washers and call it good but id much rather fix it correctly. thanks for viewing my post.

 

Is the square shaped spacer between the servo and the firewall still there? Is the servo fully extended out?

I had this same issue when putting my servo back on after removing it for that last (rounded off) head bolt. I think I put the clevis pin in and pulled the pedal and servo towards the seat, along with keeping the firewall nuts a bit loose. That put it in place without it touching the switch, but then again, my servo has seen far better days.

Ditto on the crud in the valve covers for the HG job. What a mess.

 

Thanks for replying and for the suggestion. I tried that however i began to realize that maybe there was not enough pressure to keep the petal where it needs to be in order to avoid triggering the brake light switch while it was not being pressed. I have two other vehicles and it dawned on me that the petal to those aren't spongy at all while the engine is off so i got in my 94 cavalier and the 02 trans am ws6 (my baby lol) and pressed the petal and they were rock solid as i had thought. so i then reconnected everything in the discovery 1 and put the pin back in and began to pump the petal whilst the engine was off and after about 5 minutes of pumping the petal built enough pressure to avoid setting off the brake light sensor.

Yea it looked like something out of a horror film. After looking in there and at the pistons it made me wonder how on earth the thing was running at all with that much carbon build up on every possible surface. I had to soak the heads in gasoline overnight to let some of that carbon loosen up. Even carb cleaner struggled especially on the pistons. My next task will be planning to drop the oil pan and thoroughly clean inside of there. i stuck a finger in the drain plug and felt a entire layer of sand like grit in there (just like in the valve cover) so I'm going to order a new oil pan gasket and then do another oil drain since i just did one after i put the heads on.

thanks for the help i appreciate it

 

Use Right Stuff on the oil pan with no gasket, it's the only way you'll keep it sealed. When dropping the pan you'll need to remove the pickup tube from the block otherwise the pan won't drop. When you have both off, check the pickup's screen and clean it with whatever you have that will cut the carbon, it's probably occluded like every other galley on the block and is the leading method for reducing oil pump gear rotor face specs efficiently. The bottom end of these motors take a carbon beating, you should measure at least a con rod journal when you have free time...... very telling just how much grinding the carbon did.