Scottish Elises

Symptoms...

Flat out in 3rd, change to 4th and floor it.... big plume of smoke out the back and a nasty oil burning smell.

Still drives and sounds fine at sensible rpms, but when starting from cold most of the coolant sprays out from the head gasket area. No overheating and sits comfortably at 86-ish degress when up to temp.


Actually a genuine HGF?
Piston ring?
Valve oil seals?


Some pics.....



















Answers on a postcard please... prize for the winner!



Cheers!

Dave.

Engines finally rejected the interior?

DDtB wrote:Answers on a postcard please... prize for the winner!

It's a shed.

What have I won?

Are you able to send a picture of the head gasket, both sides?

You do get the elastomer splitting away from the steel gasket and then the coolant can just "come out" to fresh air. As you got smoke out, that could be burning coolant too which would more imply a loss of clamping on the fire ring. If you got both symptoms that implies that the head just wasn't tightly bolted down anymore ... either because of some failure or perhaps because the bolts were too stretchy, overtorqued at some point, undertorqued, ....

Cheers,
Robin

Well for starters, someone has had the head off before to fix no doubt a "HGF",

but has done so, no matter what else they have or have not done with a non OEM FAI gasket which is 100% guaranteed to fail!

Will get some pics taken tomorrow of the Gasket if that helps. Only obvious thing wrong with it was some of the crud in one of the above pics.

Further background info...
Original engine in the car died at around 30k miles. Liners sunk. So a minty S2 engine was obtained which had around 25k miles on it at the time. We used the bottom end from that and put a replacement head on it, which had been lightly breathed upon and had some slightly fruitier cams in it.... So that would be why the head was off it.

If it's only the gasket that failed and putting it all back together with a nice shiny new one is all that's required... then that's fine!!

Just wondering whether to get an 'expert' to look at any of it before whacking it back together to find some thing has actually broken though!

robin wrote: You do get the elastomer splitting away from the steel gasket

Happened to a friends Elise 2 weeks ago, emptied coolant system and overheated. Expected all the usual liner height, cylinder head issues but the elastomer had separated from the head gasket.

Easy to spot on the old head gasket, might just be a HGF. Can happen I guess

Alan

Dave, did you have to keep topping it up with water on the way back, cant remember/

Still does not explain the "rattle" at higher revs though??

Stu

DDtB wrote:Will get some pics taken tomorrow of the Gasket if that helps. Only obvious thing wrong with it was some of the crud in one of the above pics.

Further background info...
Original engine in the car died at around 30k miles. Liners sunk. So a minty S2 engine was obtained which had around 25k miles on it at the time. We used the bottom end from that and put a replacement head on it, which had been lightly breathed upon and had some slightly fruitier cams in it.... So that would be why the head was off it.

If it's only the gasket that failed and putting it all back together with a nice shiny new one is all that's required... then that's fine!!

Just wondering whether to get an 'expert' to look at any of it before whacking it back together to find some thing has actually broken though!

The gasket used in your repair - much used, sold, hyped as a magic fix by all the geniuses who know f****k all is a guaranteed failure. -

Stu160 wrote:Dave, did you have to keep topping it up with water on the way back, cant remember/

Still does not explain the "rattle" at higher revs though??

Stu

Only had to top it up it it was left to cool down.

Didn't lose any on the journey from the ferry back to Glasgow...

Can't remember a rattle at higher revs though... was there one??

KingK_series wrote:
The gasket used in your repair - much used, sold, hyped as a magic fix by all the geniuses who know f****k all is a guaranteed failure. -

All I know is it was called the gasket for the head!


So gasket aside ... any other things worth looking into ?

DDtB wrote:

KingK_series wrote:
The gasket used in your repair - much used, sold, hyped as a magic fix by all the geniuses who know f****k all is a guaranteed failure. -

All I know is it was called the gasket for the head!


So gasket aside ... any other things worth looking into ?

YOU NEED TO DECK THE BLOCK
FIT PRT

but if you use a non OEM gasket you are absolutely 100% going to get nowhere......... do you want a list of whats [technically] wrong and why the gasket in your pic will fail?

KingK_series wrote:non OEM FAI gasket which is 100% guaranteed to fail!

KingK_series wrote: The gasket used in your repair - much used, sold, hyped as a magic fix by all the geniuses who know f****k all is a guaranteed failure. -

KingK_series wrote:if you use a non OEM gasket you are absolutely 100% going to get nowhere......... do you want a list of whats [technically] wrong and why the gasket in your pic will fail?

I think we get what you're trying to say, Dave's not to use a non OEM one

Gourlay83 wrote:

KingK_series wrote:non OEM FAI gasket which is 100% guaranteed to fail!

KingK_series wrote: The gasket used in your repair - much used, sold, hyped as a magic fix by all the geniuses who know f****k all is a guaranteed failure. -

KingK_series wrote:if you use a non OEM gasket you are absolutely 100% going to get nowhere......... do you want a list of whats [technically] wrong and why the gasket in your pic will fail?

I think we get what you're trying to say, Dave's not to use a non OEM one

Yep, that would be about it.......... but it's amazing how many people think the gasket is the problem and therefore the solution must be.......... to buy a non OEM one........ no matter that the OEM gasket is probably the most sophisticated gasket in use in a modern production engine and cost millions to develop............ all of which ,, cannot be said of the cheap aftermarket efforts.

anybody else keep hearing a stuck record?