:cry: Had a major disaster on the way home the other night. After parking the Z up loads of steam started to appear from the right hand side of the bonnet! On lifting up the bonnet I could hear loads of hissing and to my horror saw fluid leaking out from just above the drivers side turbo. Couldn’t see much as it was dark. Drove the Z to my local garage the next day and you wouldn’t think it had a problem. Boost fine, temperature fine and no funny engine noises.

 

On parking up the Z, loads of steam emerging from the bonnet this time, turns out the drivers side head gasket has failed and lost all the water out the rad due to oil contamination weakening one of the rubber pipes near the turbo! Arrrrrrghh!!!! Removing the radiator cap revealed the true horror, a nice muckey soup of oil and sludge! Engine out time again!!! Gonna be without her till the end of October now so gonna have to resurrect my S12 Silva. :hyper:

 

This time would it be wise to fit upgraded head-gaskets as I’m also gonna go down the route of raising the boost etc or are standard Nissan ones good enough for 14PSI??!! If so where can I get the upgraded head-gaskets to and how much will they cost compared to the standard Nissan ones!! Thanks very much to anyone who can help me and any other advise while the engine is out!!!! :cry:

Sorry to hear about your trouble mate.

 

I am sure the standard headgaskets are good enough for 14 PSI. Well that is what I am running so they had better be ...

Same here - been running just over 14psi for over 4 years on standard head gasket. No problems at all...

 

Steve :)

Also if you get a metal head gasket I think you will find that you have to tweak up the head bolts every so often which would be a PITA.

Erm, second opinion!!!!!! Sounds more like its simply blown the turbo coolant hose to me! Flush the coolant system and replace the turbo hose. Bet you it aint the head gasket! Oh and standard nissan gaskets are fine ;)

Erm, second opinion!!!!!! Sounds more like its simply blown the turbo coolant hose to me! Flush the coolant system and replace the turbo hose. Bet you it aint the head gasket! Oh and standard nissan gaskets are fine ;)

 

Andy, I must admit, in all my time on the board, there hasnt been that many head gasket problems. I even ran mine out of water and steam came from everywhere but mine was still OK.

 

Thats gotta say something for the build quality of the engine along with the bottomend supposedly able to take 600bhp.... :bow:

16psi standard head gasket for a year, and 12psi for two years prior, no probs.

 

Andy's advice seems sound. You checked for any other coolant leaks? that would be my first plan of action.

 

If U think it is head gasket, is there any white smoke when running from zorsts? any noises from manifold? Sometimes if its only minor failure the heat will expand the parts and bridge the gap, so you might not get steam etc from under until it cools a little. But I would think you will still have water crossing over for sure and entering zorst if its ****ed.

Thanks everyone, the car still runs fine even with no water cause my engineer bloke drives it out of the garage every day! no smoke from the exhaust and no funny noises! just lots of sludge in the radiator. Hope your right andy!!!

Yeah, you might find my old posts if you search...

 

...but I now actually think the cracked bore had been waiting to happen for a while and that was the real problem - not the HG.