That's a terrible tale of woe, Larry - you have my entire sympathy! On a similar note, in 1975 I changed the head gasket on my 1969 Escort, using original parts from the local distributor. All seemed to go well, but then, 60 miles into a two-week planned holiday visiting several places in the UK, the temperature gauge hit the stop, steam issued from under the bonnet, and when I popped the lid, the engine looked very, very hot! It took us hours to get home, topping the radiator up every twenty miles: when we did eventually get there, I took the head off again and found that the new gasket had only had the water channels punched out on one side, so all four cylinders were getting no proper coolant flow! Needless to say, I had a few cross words with the supplier.
Hope you get yours fixed, too, John in Brisbane John -----Original Message----- From: PDML <pdml-boun...@pdml.net> On Behalf Of Larry Colen Sent: Thursday, 9 August 2018 7:01 PM To: Pentax-Discuss List <pdml@pdml.net> Subject: Automotive fun I've peeved in passing about my recent car problems. In particular, the mystery water loss on my Subaru. I finally gave up and ordered the $300 worth of parts to do the headgasket replacement that I tried to save money on when I put the motor in the car. Monday night I had the heads off, found evidence of blowby into the cooling jacket which explained both the water loss and the lack of other typical blown headgasket symptoms. I was all set to put the new headgasket in yesterday morning when someone commented that I really ought to take the heads into the machine shop to be checked out. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157672026815098 Yesterday morning, I toss the heads in my van, fill the gas tank and the van won't start. Eventually I buy about $).25 worth of gas, pour a tiny bit down the throttle body, the van starts up, runs fine and I head into Santa Cruz. I get about another two miles further on, and the van breaks down for real. This morning I realize that the registration and smog are due on the van. I paid the registration online to avoid late fees, kind of hard to smog a vehicle that won't start. The problem with the van is probably the fuel pump. $200 for the part, in the gas tank. The full 35 gallon fuel tank that has to be removed to get to the fuel pump. I could pay my mechanic to do the job, but that's another $200 that I don't have, particularly since I can't get to work without a running vehicle. The heads are back on the Subie, though not torqued down. If nothing else goes wrong, it should be running tomorrow afternoon sometime. I won't bore you with the story of the dumb ass mistake I made yesterday that cost me something like four hours. On the bright side, I'm now pretty damned good at assembling Subaru cylinder heads. I understand that things come up, and we each face a series of crisis in our lives. I'd greatly appreciate it, however, if the Universe let me finish with on crisis before it throws the next one at me. In other news, it seems that Mom has flipped her shit and now thinks that Debbi, the friend who is taking care of her and pretty much giving her a place to live so she doesn't have to be in a home, is trying to kill her. -- Larry Colen l...@red4est.com http://red4est.com/lrc https://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/collections/72157612824732477/ -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
