Hi guys! I'm the proud owner of a 2002 0.7 (L880) Copen. I've had various issues with the car, but since working in the city I've had very little play time, so I left some running problems in the hands of a mobile mechanic I was recommended. He's pretty much screwed me around and taken about a year to semi diagnose a worn head gasket and recommended me a skim and all the works, and ask for more money for doing nothing. In the end I just brought the car back to my house and decided to do my own work again bit by bit. Gonna download one of the workshop manuals uploaded (thank you!) and get going with it, will post some progress. Any advice on stripping the cylinder head assembly would be greatly appreciated too!
If you don't trust the first mechanic, it would be worth getting a 2nd opinion on the issue or doing a compression test yourself. Head gasket problems are unusual on moden cars. If the head gasket is faulty it was probably caused by something else. Would be annoying to fix the gasket and have the same problem again.
As above, for sure. What are the symptoms? Many years ago a mechanic had me do a top end rebuild as the head gasket was blown, symptom was oil in the cooling water. Full top end rebuild on a six cylinder and nothing faulty was found, as I have OCD I got carried away with valve work, head skim, timing chains etc. Shortly after the gearbox failed, water in the gear box. It had a gearbox oil cooler that was Siamesed with the blown engine cooling radiator, gear box oil in the engine cooling water shortly followed by water in the gearbox! Some good mechanics and some very poor ones also, hard to tell them apart so I tend to DIY everything now.
Thanks for the replies both. Sounds like a frustrating problem with your mechanic too! So it's likely I have a more serious problem than the gasket. *sigh* In terms of symptoms, the car misfires around 30/40mph/low revs. The mechanic had me me pay for a new spark coil some months ago, and it didn't fix the problem, he decided it was in fact the cylinder head having a worn gasket. makes me wonder if it's something missed, like the injectors?
Sounds more like an ignition / management problem than head gasket, again I am not an expert but have fiddled around the engineering feild some years. Basic symptoms of head gasket failure below Is the engine oil clear of water contamination, oil change to verify. Is the cooling water clear of oil, look in the top of the expansion vessel, flush and change cooling fluid id five years since last known coolant change. General loss of power at all speeds, usually main head gasket symptom, do a wet / dry compression check. My advice is change spark plugs, use iridium, as a first port of call as its just so easy to do. If plugs are fine then you have a spare set for a few years down the line. Second stop is to read the fault codes. The ECU is capable of raising and logging fault codes for a huge variety of problems including a spark miss fire. Miss fires are detected by the ECU expecting a slight increase in speed of the crank shaft rotation sensor every time it fires a spark off. A blue tooth fault code reader is less than a fiver, an app for an android smart phone or tablet is "Torque Lite" and is free. Get a younster to help with Torque Lite if your a little scared of technology, but its real easy to do. Plug the blue tooth reader into the OBD2 port located under the edge of the trim panel just above the clutch pedal. Down load Torque Lite to a phone and start the app. Switch on ignition. Pair the phone with the code reader. Navigate Torque Lite to the fault code menue and see what you have. Hope this helps, perhaps others with more automotive experience will contribute.
