So my wife wants to find a Disco II. I've liked Discos for a long time, so I was on board.

Found one that looked decent and all that, but it's got leaky head gaskets--seller says exhaust ("air") into the coolant.

I also drive a VW Bus that I installed a TDI motor into. It was having a similar leak, though pretty minor. On a chance, I swapped the head bolts out one by one with ARP studs. Those things clamped it down a bit more and sealed the leak right up.

Anyone tried this and had success?

Thanks!

 

I would use the studs but would also get the heads done.

 

To even get to the interior bolts you’d have to have the upper intake, and rocker covers off.

The chance of success is slim, the cost of gaskets isn’t crazy, so I would just do a head gasket job, which has a lot of steps, but isn’t prohibitively difficult.

A bigger issue is that the block may be cracked. So without having it pressure tested it is a gamble.

Research costs of a good used motor, too.

 

I've had that work on other motors twice, once my own, once a buddy's. However, like others stated, in this case, it might not be worth the hassle vs fixing it correctly. Furthermore it'll only fix by increasing clamping pressure which means that if the reason it's leaking is the organic part of the gasket is blown out, it won't fix anything. If it was say, a cometic all metal gasket, you'd have a very high chance of this being a solution, in fact, if someone outright tells me they've a slight leak on headgasket and it's an all metal gasket, I'll tell em to give it a try, it's even better if you know what cylinder is the culprit because you can save a few bucks doing just those surrounding bolts.