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0331 head finally popped

tbburg

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Scottsdale AZ
Well, it finally happened. The non-TUPY 0331 head on my 2000 XJ popped. After 159,400 miles, during a road-trip, over 1000 miles from home. As it turns out, it was lucky I was on a road-trip.
The only symptom I noticed was a single stutter before it would start, and markedly lower mileage. If I had been at home, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the mileage drop in time to find/band-aid the problem before major damage occurred.

I caught it before it overheated or the oil got contaminated to the point of internal damage. Fortunately, I had a gallon of drinking water handy, which allowed me to get it to the next town. On the suggestion of a friend, I put radiator seal(Bar’s Leaks heavy duty radiator stop leak.), refilled the coolant, and continued on my trip.(It cracked on the way home.) It is a major PITA to get Bar’s stop leak in a late model radiator. The pellets don’t like to make the hard angle turn in the radiator neck. Then I stopped every hundred miles to check the coolant and oil condition. I was expecting the oil to turn milky, and had planned to stop and have it changed if that happened, but it never did.

To my surprise, the Bar’s sealed the leak well enough that I didn’t loose a measurable amount of coolant for the rest of the trip home, although it was steaming out of the oil fill hole the whole way home. I pulled the oil fill plug and taped a scrub pad over the hole to allow steam to vent without splashing oil everywhere. The thought was to vent the steam, and possibly prevent it from condensing inside the motor. It seems to have worked. I drove straight home, stopping only for gas and radiator checks. The continuous running seems to have cooked the coolant out of the oil, and it appears to be as clean as it was when I started the trip.

The weird thing is, I may have driven as much as 700 miles AFTER it cracked, but before I diagnosed it. There doesn’t appear to be any internal damage(other then the head) and other then the low fuel mileage, the stutter on starting, and a minor fluctuation in the temp gauge(low, not high)no symptoms. It was running fine, 3 quarts low on coolant.
 
Great catch and great bandaid with the sponge on oil fill. Seems to have worked well enough to save your rotating assembly bearings and prevent further damage.

What's the plan, TUPY head, new oil and coolant and get some heat back in that block, I hope.

Diesel is a pretty safe solvent if you want something to flush through the oil system before you dump new oil in the case. Saved my butt once on an inboard boat engine that I let sit up with milked oil from blown gaskets, although you may not need it. Never heard of preventing that stuff from emulsifying, well done.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
 
I got my 0331 Tupy from Clearwater Cylinder Head as they came highly recommended. The following year I sent it to Russ for full blown head work.
P1080516_zpsybaiiwn0.jpg
 
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