Rb25det Not Running Healthy

[RBceffy25]

I took my Ceffy for a bit of a spin last night. Ran fine but before I parked it up for the night I noticed it developed what sounded like a miss. I have just done plugs bout 1000k's ago. Went to start her up this morning and sounded like a motorbike/lawnmower and I thought coil pack maybe. Pumped the throttle twice while running and it blew a heap of what appeared to be steamy smoke out of the exhaust then idled ok but still with the miss characteristics. I shut her down and checked my oil level which was down a little but no milk in the oil cap and then check coolant only to find it had turned to a milkshake.

Correct me if I am wrong, but this sounds like head gasket to me and coolant is leaking into a cylinder hence the rough start up (trying to compress and burn water) and oil has got into my coolant.

Can someone please confirm what might be happening here?

Can I please have some advice on what I should be doing next to start fixing the problem?

Also what sort of costs will I be looking at?

As a side note, my brother has a fully reconditioned head sitting in amongst our parts, minus cams and gears. I have the stock gears and HKS gears, Poncams and cam covers sitting there also as well as full gates racing belt kit including timing belt.

This is my first real engine failure and I am really stressed about it especially since I was made redundant a week ago.

Any help is highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[central coast person]

We had a car come into work the other day that sounded like a chopper/giant lawn mower and it had a compleatly stuffed head, headgasket and cracked exhuast manifold. Its cost using genuine brand new parts was 2.2 grand.

You should definatly look at your exhaust manifold to check that it has not cracked but the crack on the car we had was hairline and could not see it till it was at temp or taken off the car.

Thick muddy looking coolant is contamination with oil so i can only assure you, yeah your headgasket is gone.

I recomend taking the head off. Changing a few gaskets while your changing the headgasket, using a compleatly reconditioned heads and make sure all your valve set up is ok ie seats and springs etc etc are in good condiction also the shalfs.

If you do the work yourself

It would be about $300 for a stock gasket kit, using your recondictioned head and parts $free and exhaust manifold stock 2nd hand about $100

^^^Thats budget

Labour could be around $800 to take your head off and put it on if you supply the parts.

[RBceffy25]

Thanks for the reply!

I will use the head and Poncams I have and get a new gasket set. My manifold should be ok as the noise was the exhaust on rough start-up. Didn’t hear anything in the engine bay. But I’ll have everything inspected anyway.

Can anyone recommend a shop to do the labour for me? I'm on the gold coast.

So what’s needed is: take of my head and replacing it with the fresh one and new gaskets/seals?

Is $800 about the ball park figure?

How hard is it to do it myself?

Edited May 31, 2010 by RBceffy25