Last week we had a short holiday in Scotland. The primary aim was to gather as many of the Surfing Africa team together in one place at one time as possible, and go offroading in the Highlands with the two Surfs.
The primary aim was completed without too many problems. A video of the highlights will be along in due course, but suffice to say we drove through some forests with varying levels of roads, cut down some trees to let us through, got stuck a few times, got eaten by midges and came out alive.
On the way back down South however, things weren’t so smooth. Perhaps the largest weakness with the engines in both the Surfs is that, if they overheat, the cylinder head is prone to cracking. Sometimes the crack would immediately disable the engine but other times, as in our case, it would carry one for a while before giving up at a seemingly unrelated place. In our case, the motorway service station outside Stirling, where we had pulled in to drop off a hitch-hiker and fill up on juice.
(All pictures below can be enlarged by clicking on them)
Dad and I removing the cracked cylinder head
Coolant in cylinder 3
Russell helping clean the top of the block
New head with manifolds on bench, old head on ground
Finishing touches with wet & dry paper
New head fitted with initial torque being applied to bolts
Torquing up the exhaust manifold
New cylinder head fully fitted
The crack between the injection port and exhaust valve on cylinder 3
All said and done, cracks of this sort are a result of an engine being allowed to overheat by a poorly maintained cooling system, evident in this particular Surf’s history by the blocked and slightly leaking radiator when we bought it.
