Last tuesday driving to work the temp on the rover shot up, luckily i was a couple of blocks away so i kicked the heater on full blast and turned the ac on and limped it in. Went out on lunch to give things a once over and figure out wtf was going on. VC on the fan didnt seem to be locking up as it was freewheling. In looking things over i opened up the coolant reservoir, dry as a bone.. crap.. checked the oil and things looked ok.. Topped up the coolant with distilled water. Truck started and ran ok, went about making sure air was bleeding out of the reservoir and smelled exhaust gas.. looked back and water is pouring out of the tail pipe.. no bueno.. shut the motor off and called it a day, got a ride to a friends house whose fish i was feeding while he was out of town and borrowed his spare car. Drove to work the next day and got the rover flat bedded home.

Started to tear into the truck this weekend. Began by checking the oil, level was high and milky. hrmmph.. started out by pulling the spark plugs one by one and everything looked ok until i got to #8, where upon removal water began pouring out of the spark plug hole.. we have a winner!! At that point i began dis-assembling things in earnest, started by disconnecting the throttle and taking all the coolant hoses and electrical connections apart. went to remove the upper half of the intake manifold and the two front two allen bolts on the drivers side werent even finger tight, suspect i had a bit of a vacuum leak going on there. Got all of the bolts holding the lower part of the manifold to the heads off and called it a night when i realized i didnt have a 12pt 8mm to pull the valve cover bolts. More to follow..

 

And the adventure begins...

Plenty of us have done this job recently. See threads by Eric, Timebus and my own for some tips and advice. It's all fairly straight-forward though. Fortunately you caught it early. Good luck!

 

Yeah, R&R'ing the heads on the rover will be childs play compared to all the other VW's i've worked on in the past. Gotta love having tons of room in the engine bay. Hoping that it didnt bend a rod or crack the liner in that cylinder since it was obviously compressing water.. Oddly enough the motor didnt sound odd at all while it was running before i noticed it pissing water out the exhaust.. We'll see once i get in there.. Gotta pop the intake manifold off tonight and undo the down pipe bolts so i can pull the heads and inspect things.

 

will be interesting to see if the rod bent having been run like that... hopefully not though!

 

I've found that a 1/4 drive 5/16 deep-socket fits better and is easier to find.



Good luck

 

...or a 5/16" 1/4 drive socket and an extension.

 

yup.. 2.50 for the standard vs 3.79 for the deep well. Gotta save a dollar here and there when you can..

 

Got the valve covers off and found a few things.. rocker shaft bolts were torqued down waaaay too tight whereas most of the exhaust bolts were way loose.. bottom bolt on #7 exhaust port was mia causing a bit of an exhaust leak as witnessed by the gaskets. To compound things further on the drivers side downpipe to exhaust manifold junction one nut was finger tight and allowing a leak there as witnessed on the gasket. Tried getting the fan clutch off but it was being stubborn so I hit it with some PB blaster and will try again tomorrow. Should have the heads off by tomorrow night.

 

I did the whole job without removing the fan clutch. Of course I ended up removing it later to replace but it doesn't get in the way for just the HG job.

 

I think the reason why it overheated in the first place is that the fan clutch failed so it needs to be replaced anyhow. From looking at things it looks like they put some sort of sealant on the head gasket which is a contributing factor to the HG failing. I had bought the truck with the understanding that the head gaskets had been re-done in the last 10K miles. Looking at the heads they are really clean over all, no schmutz or anything in the rocker areas. Lifters and cam look really good with minimal wear. Push rods look good as well with minimal wear, tiny flat spot at the ends of the *****, about 1/16 give or take at the ends. I'll get the passenger side exhaust manifold off tonight and take the accessories off the front of the engine and hopefully have the heads off so i can see the failure points..