Oil in spark plug chambers???

[fd]

either the top cover or the cam ladder . . .

Fd

[steve_weegie]

Aye, what he said

I'd start with the cam cover gasket as its a piece of cake to change.... Re-sealing the two halfs of the head will involve removing the cam belt, seperating the cam ladder, applying some liquid gasket goo & sticking it all back together

Part for the cam cover gasket should be LVP100630

Edited to add, you could start just by checking that the cam cover bolts are correctly torqued to 10nm... If these are loose then the gasket could seep oil into the plugs i guess.....

[robin]

Yes, there is plenty of oil flying around there - loose cam cover could easily fill the plug bores with oil - in fact it's more likely to be that than gasket or sealant failure if you really do have oil in all four plug bores.

Cheers,
Robin

[Dominic]

May be obvious , but check your oil level too

[philthy]

I had this because I had been careless when topping the oil up

[2F45T4U]

what Robin says

[steve_weegie]

Good stuff Mr Noops sir Just out of curiosity, what was the culprit??

[jj]

Good stuff Mr Noops sir Just out of curiosity, what was the culprit??

The oil in plug chambers ?? cam gasket round the wrong way?? /

The faint ticking noise( which became worse) manifold not particularly tight??? with a stud missing resulting in exhaust gasses leaking past the gasket causing the ticking noise.

Cheers

Noops

More quality workmanship

Glad you got it sorted Mr P.

[meatball]

Good stuff Mr Noops sir Just out of curiosity, what was the culprit??

The oil in plug chambers ?? cam gasket round the wrong way?? /

The faint ticking noise( which became worse) manifold not particularly tight??? with a stud missing resulting in exhaust gasses leaking past the gasket causing the ticking noise.

Cheers

Noops

More quality workmanship

Glad you got it sorted Mr P.

I assume that since a Kelly bro has commented then we all know who did the work?

[meatball]

Glad its sorted mate........mistakes happen (as I know).......(rest of post removed)

[philthy]

The very same.......however like someone else up here making a slight technical fcuk up.......someone comes and sorts

yeap and very grateful that they did, especially very early on 31st dec.

meatball - I dont dislike 'a certain specialist', just know which one Id rather trust my car with.

[robin]

Sheesh. All this innuendo does nobody any good, and frankly I don't even know why it's being posted.

I've seen 10's of mistakes made on SE cars made by each and every shop that SE frequent including cross threading, broken electrical connectors left hanging off, sump plugs finger tight, sawn off bolts, brake springs fitted upside down, crank pulleys refitted without the washer, batteries left unclamped, battery isolators fitted incorrectly, and many many more that don't spring to mind right now.

I don't see any point in naming (or worse, insinuating) who is behind these mistakes because I know that the majority of the work that these very same shops do is OK and what are you going to do anyway? If you rule out taking your car to every shop that has ever made a mistake, you will need to do the work yourself.

IMHO it's not about the mistakes (unless every car that leaves the shop is f*cked, of course) but rather about what happens next.

If you have a problem with your car that develops quickly after somebody has worked on your car, you should take it up with them first to give them an opportunity to rectify. Of course they may not be prepared to fix what they don't consider to be their fault (for free, anyway) and that's always going to happen. Some people's expectations are unreasonable, and these people will generally be disappointed - I'm sure that's happened everywhere at some point or another.

Anyway, rant over, carry on ...

Cheers,
Robin

[minkypotglory]

Robin,
Wait a minute, Neils car was taken to -=-For a head gasket failure and a new radiator.It was away for flecking agais( 6/7 weeks).
To the point that the AA wasn't going to payout twice/. To cut the story short. Got a phone call from-=-To say car was ready.To be told was your car running. On collection the car run like a bag of bolts...Acseptable/not????sortable / apparently not??? ..( not far off £1000, car not running properly.......

You might find this acceptable, I fecking don't , I flecking wouldn't let MMC or any one else off with this ,

We went to the expense of replacing the raddiator.To.-=- all other work covered by the AA, was payed in flecking full, the rest paid for in cash.

-=- could not fix the problem, that's' why Noops had to take it else where.....

At our expense we have had to sort and are still sorting some underlying issues out.............

We understand the Edinburg Maffia rains supreme , but not over me.....

Up your ARSE Mags

[fd]

What the fsck does -=- mean ?

Fd

[robin]

Hi Mags,

I am not suggesting for one minute that you, Neil or anyone else puts up with poor service or poor quality workmanship from anyone.

I am only suggesting that by insinuating who did the work rather than just plainly naming them you are doing nobody any favours.

I agree entirely that it is your choice who works on your car, including not asking the original shop to remedy any faults, if you have decided that you didn't want them to for whatever reason.

I do believe it's only fair to state whether or not you asked them to remedy the fault, though, rather than leaving the impression that they didn't or wouldn't.

I am not part of the Edinburgh Maffia, whatever that actually is.

As for up my ARSE? I am surprised to be given such abuse when all I have ever done is try and help people (including you & Neil from time to time).

So perhaps you will allow me to state from my memory what you seem unwilling to state - please correct me where I am wrong as you will clearly know more accurately than I do.

Your's & Neil's car had HGF and a broken radiator (I don't understand the AA paying out twice issue - perhaps you can expand on that if it's relevant?).

Neil took it to Ali at SLS to get it repaired. For various reasons the car was there a long time, longer than you expected, and I am sure some of this delay is down to Ali.

The car is fitted with vernier pulleys which were not adjusted during the work, however when you got the car back it wasn't running right, probably due to cam timing. I don't know whether this was a sub-tooth error (i.e. a tweak required to verniers) or a whole-tooth error (i.e. timing marks not aligned properly). I do know that the cam timing on cars like your's is quite sensitive to small changes - whether the small change introduced by skimming the head and changing the gasket could account for the problem I don't know - it will obviously have some effect.

At the time Ali had no way to correct your cam timing as he didn't have a rig for timing in cams with verniers nor did he probably know the timing you actually required (it's not a service he generally offers, as discussed in the Victor thread) - remember that your car is non-standard so it's not fair to assume that every shop will automatically know everything they need to know or have the tools to adjust it.

So you took the car somewhere else to have the cam timing corrected, which is certainly fair enough under the circumstances.

When we were timing in Victor's cams, Ali happened to tell me that you had told him the cam timing was out by approximately 2 degrees - if that is indeed the case, then that's a sub-tooth error that would be corrected by measuring the cam lift at TDC and then tweaking the verniers to get the desired setting. IMHO you do need to remove the cam cover to do that properly, though.

So I would suggest that the incorrect fitting of the cam cover gasket (which is what this thread is actually about!) is not necessarily Ali's fault, given that it's at least possible that somebody else removed that gasket since he worked on it.

One of the exhaust studs also worked loose - this most likely is down to the stud not being tight in the first place, so unless anybody else has worked on the exhaust manifold since the car was at SLS, that would indeed be Ali's fault. I'm guessing had you asked him, he could and would have rectified that for you, even though it has developed quite a long time after the fact.

As for sorting out the other underlying issues, once again by not telling us what those actually are and why you think they are anybody's fault in particular, you are just insinuating something which does nobody any favours. Perhaps you can expand on those also.

Cheers,
Robin