Hi All: My car overheats after 10 minutes of driving. Have a new radiator, new thermostat and all hoses are good. Told by local European car dealership probably have a blown head gasket. I did notice a lot of smoke coming out of my tailpipe a year ago, but been running well since. Thinking of fixing the vehicle. Costly repair obviously. Anyone have experience with this ? And what did you do? Thanks for help! Ed

 

heh Ed! You’ll find more d2 guidance in the d2 section but head gaskets on a d2 is a couple of weekends work spread over 3 weeks depending on your machine shop turnaround. It’s one weekend to disassemble, a week at the machine shop, then a weekend to reassemble with new coil packs and plugs.

 

Before you dive into heads though, is the car losing coolant ?
Have you tested for exhaust gas in the coolant ?
Does the cooling system retain pressure?
overheating could be because the system needs bled and the d2 is infamous for being more involved to bleed than earlier incarnations of the Rover v8

 

Thanks For the very useful information. I will definitely bleed the system before I proceed with head gasket...Best! Ed

 

Do you know the proper way to bleed one of these?

A simple test you can do, when the engine is stone cold in the morning, is to open the bleed screw... If coolant is right to the top of that hole you are properly bled. If not you can use a small funnel or whatever else to add fluid directly through the bleed hole until it flows out, then replace the screw. Drive and repeat the next morning. after a few days it should no longer need topping off. If it does, you are losing coolant somewhere.

 

You have a lot to read on here. Not sure on your mechanical skills but all the info you need is here.

 

Someone should write a sticky on overheating causes what to look for and fixes