Ok ladies and gentlemen, I have pulled the disco into the garage and the repair of the blown headgasket is about to begin. As I have not ever undertaken a repair of this complexity before (it cant be harder than changing a tire right? - thats only a joke. sorta) I own no tools except for a leatherman, and I have no one for adult supervision except for my wife (who is hiding in the closet with a helmet on - she has seen me try to fix things before) and my faithful lab puppy Tomah (whos main job is to keep fetching dad beer - good dog!) I have decided to name this catastrophe, uh, repair, THE GREAT HEAD GASKET ADVENTURE!

I shall take pictures as I go along and will keep posting the pics and my comments, rants, raves, observations and etc as i go.

In actuality I have a fairly good idea what I need to do to accomplish this task (well at least the disassembly portion - i getting help on the reassembly. I always was better at breaking than fixing. funny thought, that), I have the parts kit here from British Atlantic, I have the digital camera and a box of zip lock baggies with sharpie to photograph and organize bolts and bits as I take them apart, I have the RAVE manual here somewhere on CD, I have DiscoMikes phone number on speeddial, and I have the fridge in the garage full of cold beer. I do believe I am set. HOWEVER, I am the same idiot who failed shop class so wish me luck.


PS DiscoMike, I shall apologize now for the hundreds of phone calls and emails asking dumb questions that I know I am going to make to you - let me know what top shelf liquor you most prefer and I shall make the drive to the post office the rover's test drive.


wish me luck

brian

 

I would stay away from beer. I tend to end up with extra bolts when I get carried away with it.

 

go for it.... I dont think...well i know you couldnt do any worse than the idiots who designed and built it in the first place.... You may even improve it to boot...

Keep alot of beer on hand...i think alot of thoes extra parts are the problem anyway..

It's pretty hard to make a POS any worse than it already is...you'll be fine...

Keep us informed, Chris

 

I agree with the beer, as it makes frustrating things not so frustrating. I replaced the engine in my Disco over two weekends with the help of my neighbor. I think the only breaks we took while working on it were to go to the store to get more beer. Surprisingly, we had no extra parts when done. I cheated though: after unbolting something, I partially screwed the bolt back in, just to make sure all bolts went back in their original locations.

I think were it not for the beer, we could have done it in half the time, but it would have been only half as fun!

 

So, have you ordered all your parts, gasket set, t/stat, 8 mm plug wires, bottle of Water Wetter or Purple Ice, new upper radiator hose if you don't have the new style bleed screw in the black plastic "T" and head bolts.

 

Best of luck to you. I did this about 2 years ago, and I'm a happy camper. The beer supply is important, but the tools are too. Don't mean to preach, but if you try to get by using something other than the correct tool, bad things can happen (as he notes scars on hands with his one good eye). Take pictures and notes. It's amazing how one can forget how something goes together when it looked so obvious when you took it apart.

 

Have fun man and good luck! Remember when you get to this point....
take a deep breath, you’re half way there.

 

DiscoMike,

Yes, I have the head gasket kit sitting in the back seat of the rover. The t-stat is relatively new (remember I replaced them about 2 years ago when I thought that was the problem - I deployed with the army for a year and the vehicle mostly sat in the driveway so the parts prolly dont have 3k miles on them - and the plugs and wires were new at the same time. All I am lacking is the fluids; I am going to go ahead and replace all of the fluids in her after reassembly, al la MIKE 60k SERVICE sticky directions. I do need to order the new radiator hoses; had a new one before but lost the little t-screw thingy and ended up putting the old hose back on.

Tonight I shall start the taking pictures and drinking beer while staring at engine trying to figure out where to start phase of the adventure.

question: exactly what do I need to remove under the hood to get acces to the heads? I am afraid that if I start randomly removing stuff I will end up with just the frame sitting sitting there and a bunch of empty beer bottles. I TOLD you I was good at taking stuff apart...

thanks guys,

brian

 

You may want to get something to read in bed: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/185...ef=oss_product

 

Add to your list lining up a shop to take your heads to for cleaning and inspection for any cracks and warpage.