Scottish Elises

Have head gasket failure and possible cracked cylinder head (at least one, it has 4!) but at least not on the Elise, but the Jeep

Jeep has a high mileage, 111,000+ and is a 2000, 2.5 TD.

My local garage don't have time to look at it till next week, and when they do the owner said it will be min £200 for labour to strip engine and look at cylinder heads etc, heads are £160 each, gasket about £50. So minimum bill will be over £300 if it's 'just' the gasket, and if multiple heads are cracked then it could be nearer a grand

In the mean time I need a work vehicle so will probs end up hiring a van, add £200 to bill. Now minimum bill is gonna be £500 + (and that could be for the garage to say I've 4 cracked heads )

So I'm trying to decide what to do..


Go ahead with repairs and hire a van.

Go ahead with repairs and buy a 'scrapper' to run in in mean time, but a scrapper must be reliable so will end up being £1000 +.

Try and strip it myself and save sum cash, but will still need another vehicle either hired or bought, and will need time to do work!

Trade in Jeep for something else and not mention that there are any problems. But will need to spend a bit more than £1000 to get a decent trade in price for Jeep.

Any other options?



Jeep has done well and was due for retirment soon, but not right now!
Last time I had a dealer look at taking the Jeep as a trade in they offered £2500 max and that was against a brand new Nissan Navara ..But would expect to sell it for around £4000-£3500 if private sale..

I would strip it down myself, if you have somewhere sensible to do it. How hard can it be I assume it's a push rod (i.e. not overhead cam) engine, so unless it's impossible to reach stuff I wouldn't expect dismantly and re-assembly to be a major issue.

Of course that assumes you have the time - it all depends on how a 500+ quid bill from the garage compares to what you'll lose by not working for the time it takes to fix it ...

Cheers,
Robin

I have one of those in the Voyager,what happened to it?I have known of taxi,s putting 250000 miles on them and no probs.As they are single heads,I doubt they are cracked,as Robin said,have a look,I can skim them for you .

Also ,may be able to pick them up at a breaker?

Stu

Stu160 wrote:I have one of those in the Voyager,what happened to it?I have known of taxi,s putting 250000 miles on them and no probs.As they are single heads,I doubt they are cracked,as Robin said,have a look,I can skim them for you .

Also ,may be able to pick them up at a breaker?

Stu

The rad went pop a couple of weeks ago, and after fitting a re-cored one all seemed well till last week, now it is loosing coolant with no visible leaks, and there is a lot of pressure building up in the expansion tank, looks like 'gas' coming through the coolant in the tank.

Had Colin Nixon EC look at it, but it's not been pressure tested yet, he suspected gasket, but it could be a cracked head too.

I've never done a gasket myself and not got anywhere covered to do it, and wouldn't want to get half way through to discover it needs 'proffesional' attention...

Anyway, getting a pressure test later this morning, when I pick up my new van * So dilema over, well kind of for the now, till the P test..





* New Van, well new to me, 80,000 mile 2001 Escort Diesel (no turbo /cptn slow\ ), seems in reasonable condition, and I have a buyer for when I'm finished needing it

Ok,so may have done damage then,just need to wait and see.

Stu

MacK

Just replace the engine with a 1.8K, and you will never have a H/G failure again<BG>

tut