my first Micra mechanical 'failure'

And not in 'old faithful' the car with 325,000k's either but the 'red rocket' ex family hack.
First noticed it had developed a miss after idleing when hot, got progressivley worse on the drive home but still running fine once under way. First thought it might have been a faulty plug but no luck I am afraid as just a few k's from home the temp surged upwards and I knew the sad story.
Hopefully just a head gasket.

Mychael

wow... an n/a micra with a bhg... that would be a first

Re-read the post. He's not talking about the green one with high KMs, rather he's talking about Family Hack - the red turbo'd SLX.

Sorry to hear Mychael - it's never nice when unexpected things like this happen. Hopefully it's nothing major and it'll be back on the road soon.

All the best ;)

---dens

Yeah, will go for the easy stuff first. Pull the head and pray it's just the gasket.

Mike

Head is off. Nothing scary was found. Head gasket was in a bad way however, it was heading for a failure pretty soon.
We are just going to vacuum test the head and if it is ok we wont touch the valves.

Asked the engine guys for an opinion about boosting on a standard head gasket, their opinion was that the gasket has not failed from combustion, rather the gasket was just pretty poor condition.. Why? not sure, maybe head torque was a bit low, dunno, but in any case they felt it would be safe to go with the standard head gasket provided we continue to drive sensibly.

Mychael

Gee I wish I had the time and space to do more work myself..simple things get drawn out 'cos of bad planning.. Okay so the head came back, everything was alright, valves were vacuum tested and came up good and just the thinnest of skimming was done on it. All for $70, so far so good I think.
I return the head to the mechanic that pulled the engine down, he asks me if the re-conditioners set the valves up with the shims, I tell him I don't know as I did not ask as he did not specifically request I do that.
I go on to say that it should be okay anyway if they were not touched and he then tells me they got displaced when he pulled the head off.

So I phone the reco guys to ask if they had re-set the valves, they say no and it will be another $200 to do it.. So the mechanic who at first said he couldn't do it now says it will cost me about the same either way and he will do the valves himself.

Had he told me in the first place I could have had it all done at one place in one go and it would be ready to put back together. Now we have to cope with a single car for an extra week because of him.

Hard to find good help anymore.

Mychael

Finally got the car back geez what a saga.. His work is okay but he sure aint fast.

Seems to be running ok. Might have a miss at certain revs that was not there before but a little too early to tell. I'll give it a few days work and then re-assess.

Mychael

I'm in the process of reassembling mine after a HG failure, skim etc. Left the valves where they were and just noted which shim/tappet went where. The clearances are OK as far as I know as we reset them... last time the head came off. And no, sadly this engine isn't modified at all. First time the head came off because I screwed up a timing chain job and lunched the top end; second time (50k km & 4 yrs later) was probably due to the workmanship first time round.