Tuesday 17 August 2010

Cylinder Head Removed

After Monday's excitement at Booger Mobile being registered and subsequent head gasket debacle, Damian rang a couple of cylinder head reconditioners and booked Booger Mobile's head in to be reconditioned. Time is of the essence, as Booger Mobile is due at the Gold Coast on Sunday for the Corvette Club Show'n'Shine (Team Booger Mobile are special guests!)

Scottie finished work and headed straight to Team Booger Mobile headquarters (Damian's shed) and commenced the not difficult, but time-consuming task of removing the cylinder head to inspect the damage and prepare for reconditioning.


First to be removed was the carby and associated brackets... this enabled Scottie to see the damage to the speedo cable - thankfully it was only the plastic connector on the end that had melted!


After the carby, the extractors were next to be removed. They are easy enough in theory, but in practice, the bolts, particularly up near the firewall (to the left of the picture below) are quite difficult to reach.



Special thanks to Damian's lovely wife Tricia for taking the above photos.

Damian arrived home from work to find the cylinder head removed.


There were a couple of small marks on the head gasket where the leak would have been, but no actual breaks. Damian shook his head and wondered how unlucky the boys must have been to experience this, but still grateful it happened now rather than on the first day of esCarpade!!

The blue and black cylinder head (on the left) is the one from Booger Mobile and will be being delivered to the reconditioner on Wednesday morning. The rusty looking one (on the right) is a spare one that will be going along for the ride in case there are any useable parts that would be suitable!!


It's important that the black rods in the picture below go back into the engine in the same order they came out - DON'T TOUCH THEM!!


The engine block looked to be in pretty good condition, however cylinder 6 had clearly had some coolant leak into it (and the head gasket marks supported that theory), and cylinders 2 and 3 (counting from 1 on the left) had the lowest compression, so it will be interesting to retest the compression after the head is reconditioned.



Damian wondered where Scottie had drained the coolant from the radiator (his only advice to Scottie was not to drop it on the floor of his shed)!! He located it in a bucket under Booger Mobile... looks as good as the day it went in!! Might recycle it - there's about $70 worth of coolant there!!


So that's that. The cylinder head has been removed and is ready for delivery to the reconditioner. Damian has an extensive shopping list of parts and tools to purchase, including plugs, points, leads etc, exhaust heat-tape and ties, self adhesive heat tape for wires etc. Hopefully he can get the extractors sorted before Scottie returns on Saturday to put the head on, and Booger Mobile can be back on the road early enough to test drive before heading down to the Gold Coast on Sunday...

It's going to be a BIG week!! Never a dull moment with Booger Mobile!!

2 comments:

  1. BOOGERS CYLINDER HEAD REMOVED OH NO
    Yes there is no time to waste, for Booger Mobile is now registered to drive and after the unfortunate events of yesterday,there are a lot of thing to remove.Some things like the cylinder head need to be sent off for repairing.
    while Damian was at work, Scottie arrived and started to on the sad task of removing the damaged parts.Taking over for Damian on the camera was his wonderful wife, keeping up with taking some fantastic pictures for Damian to put on the blog. Thank you Tricia your a real gem.
    Wow thats a lot of money for some Booger green water rofl.
    Fingers crossed that all goes well with repairing the Booger Mobile, so that its back on the road in time to shine at the car show on sunday where Booger Mobile will be a real stand out helping to raise funds for Camp Quality.

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  2. The cylinder heads are what make the difference. The Vortec head works with the block in such a way that a compression vortex is created in the combustion chamber, which greatly increases the explosive force. This is then transferred to the pistons and so out to power the vehicle, but the key will always be the heads.
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    Vortec Cylinder Heads

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