Busy Weekend But Still Defeated

Well after two busy days working on the car, this evening I have decided that I just cant wait until next weekend to look into it further so its going to the garage to get fixed.

I had a complete power failure a week ago and the car would no longer start and it turned out that the head gasket had gone between the first and second cylinder (the photo shows the gasket upside down.

So that was replaced along with the rocker gasket and the inlet/exhaust gasket.
As the coolant had been flushed I also filled it with Holts Speedflush ready to fix it further the next day.
I took the car for a quick drive as per the Speedflush instructions but when I arrived back home the coolant was boiling. Hmmm?

The next day the coolant was flushed and replaced with proper coolant. The water pump was checked by removing the fan and the pump from the housing to check it turned okay. The thermostat was tested by putting it in water and heated to check it opens at the desired temp (around 82degrees C) I also replaced the thermostat gasket at the same time. While the fan was off I changed the fanbelt which turned out that the old belt was only ever so slightly stretched compared to the new one but still it's changed now.

So then the radiator was flushed through with clean water, re-fitted and filled with coolant mixed 2 parts water, 1 part coolant. The coolant was Halfords Silicate (IAT) type which is the preferred type of coolant over organic acid technology (OAT) coolant which is no good for older cars.

Next on the list, replace the points and condenser. These are both straight forward, simply two screws to take the old out and new put in its place. The screw that holds down the points is what is used to set the points gap, with the red part (in my photo) of the points pointing at one of the high points of the rotor, slide the points so that the gap opens and using feeler gauges the gap is set to 0.015" and the screw is tightened.

Next on the hit list was to change the spark plugs. The replacement plugs that I bought were NGK's where as the ones currently fitted were Champion.
Obviously changing spark plugs is straight forward just make sure you use a spark plug socket as you don't want to damage them. So out came 4, 3, 2 and, wait there. I cant get into one because of the alternator. So that had to be slackened off again and the fan belt taken off the alternator pulley so I can slide it out of the way and access is gained. Surprise surprise the plug in 1 is an NGK, it would seem a previous owner/mechanic couldn't be bothered to go through that little bit of work to replace plug 1.

So now that all of that was done I started the car and all was hunky dory apart from a little water getting out of the pipe that connects that thermostat housing to the top of the radiator, no problems, to the box of spares that came with the car.

Now to reap the rewards and take the car out for a drive. No more than a 3 mile run as I wasn't sure I was even going to get back as the car had no power at all. Once back I tried to re-start so I could use my shiny new stroboscopic timing light to adjust the timing but it wouldn't start. Maybe doing it statically first? So I tried to crack the car by hand but it wasn't moving due to the compression, so out came the plugs again and I managed to turn it but couldn't see the mark so I got an assistant to turn the car over to turn the wheel a bit quicker and hopefully see it. At this point I was shot at from cylinder 4 what turned out to be coolant in the cylinder, bad news.

At that point I decided to give up, I'll be calling the garage tomorrow and hopefully get it collected.

With any look the water wont have been compressed and snapped a con rod but either way watch this space.