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[bighed]

For full storey see Senator section "My new Senator"

Well, There is a oil leak coming from the oil gallery on the middle left of the head gasket. Location on a new head gasket seen in pic.



My home mechanic skills are very limited so a friend who is a mechanic has offered his services to help me do this. The head gasket, cam chains, guides (if I can find some!!!) water pump and numerous sprockets and gaskets, all in, come to about 500 pounds, with one sprocket alone totalling over 100. 

After that I will need full service parts, oil, filters, plugs, leads, coolant, dizzy. And thats just the engine.

So out I went today with tools in hands and started taking the easier stuff apart, even sketching the engine and numbering parts up so to know where they go back to.

[bighed]

I removed the radiator and fan cowling as to dump the coolant. I will need to do more flushing through once engine is further apart.

But as you can see from this pic, its not the smallest of jobs so progress will be slow!!

[BIG DAN]

any progress is still progress mate sounds like u bin havin fun bud !!

[bighed]

Yeah mate. I work funny shifts and only get two weekends off in 6 weeks. Whereas my mate has every sunday off so working round that is a bit of a pain. Looks like a few holiday requests will be going in!!!!

[bighed]

Bit of progress. Engine is having an overhaul.. Thats if I can get the parts needed. Have got this far in about 4 hours. Had a pig undoing the 12 nuts that hold the exhaust manifold on. Only to find out the aircon receiver dryer is in way so that needs to come off too!!!

[vinny_69]

i didn't think working on a senny would be that hard....seems i was wrong

[bighed]

lol. Well im going in for round 3 on thursday as im off. So anyone local, feel free to come and help haha.

[vinny_69]

a location might help mate 

[BIG DAN]

soz mate bit of a trek for me without wheels at min lol

[bighed]

sorry, Shropshire. Many miles from anywhere.

[vinny_69]

i use a tom tom to get to work as ive only been working at the same place for 9 years so you saying shropshire means bugger all 

[bighed]

Update. Suddenly realised that the manifold is in two parts, so once the penny dropped and I had disconnected a few more pipes I was left with this.....



The engine sounded like it was firing on 5 cylinders on tick over. Think I might have found the problem??



Belt is going to need replacing also



And when I pulled the leads off the plugs, the wells had about 1 1/2 inch of oil in them

.


Round 4 Tomorrow

[vinny_69]

you can see why it was a bargin cant ya thats gonna be a big job to get that looking like the rest of your motors

[bighed]

Yeah. Enjoying it so far. And once astra is sold its will be all guns blazing!!!!

[bighed]

Well have pulled as much oil as I can out of plug wells this afternoon and removed the cam cover.





WOW. What a daunting sight!!! Looks quite clean for a 106,000 mile engine. Not doing anymore now apart from cleaning engine bay with Jizer as best I can and get the club DVD from ABS which explains in detail what to do next!!