The Story of a Kit Car Build

Bad Head

However, all good things must come to an end. And where I’m concerned, it usually ends in tears. With all that enthusiastic revving of the engine, I got home only to find the camshaft oil seal was leaking and throwing oil around the engine bay. “Oh, dear me,” I said. “Whatever shall I do?” (If you believe that you’ll believe anything.)

If you’ve read any of this story before, you’ll possibly remember me quoting, “If ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well, now was the time to fix it.

It just so happened that I’d a spare engine that came with the part-built car which had reputedly been reconditioned. So I removed the cylinder head with the intention of changing the whole thing. Everything went OK with the removal and when I inspected the old head, I saw quite a few of the waterways were blocked which could have explained why it seemed to overheat when a thermostat was fitted, resulting in me removing it. So hopefully that will solve that problem.

I could, of course, have the head converted to unleaded while it’s off, but I’ll wait until I need to as I should get many years using fuel additives given the few miles I’ll do each year; 5000 should be max I think.