75ZT Community

This month Car Mechanics magazine has a full, in depth report about changing the K series head gasket, may be of interest to some of you!!

I helped change a head gasket (the first of many) when I was about 13 years old, it was on an old ford side valve engine and took just over an hour.

Most cars had to be decoked every 20-30k miles as routine.. And dropping the sump to replace big end shell bearings was an afternoons fun.. But if you had any sense you replaced the rings and small ends while you were at it, so it often became a full days play..

Personally I was glad when the Asian cars started turning up cos they lasted more than 4 years without your feet going through the floor and having to tack new sills on every spring..

We make far too big a deal of car repairs now mainly because kids are not taught to do simple mechanical repairs in the way us over 50's were..
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James.uk wrote:
Personally I was glad when the Asian cars started turning up cos they lasted more than 4 years without your feet going through the floor and having to tack new sills on every spring..
...

....like the Datsun Cherry, for example!

Agree with the rest of what you say though.

James.uk wrote:I helped change a head gasket (the first of many) when I was about 13 years old, it was on an old ford side valve engine and took just over an hour.

Most cars had to be decoked every 20-30k miles as routine.. And dropping the sump to replace big end shell bearings was an afternoons fun.. But if you had any sense you replaced the rings and small ends while you were at it, so it often became a full days play..

...

Reminds me of happy days with my dad grinding in valves of the kitchen table.

Bernard wrote:

James.uk wrote:
Personally I was glad when the Asian cars started turning up cos they lasted more than 4 years without your feet going through the floor and having to tack new sills on every spring..
...

....like the Datsun Cherry, for example!

great cars Datsun,had a sunny got it new in 1983 frist new car.
never one took it back for repair.
px it in 1998 for a new rover, took dealer to court to get car replaced
(owing to the paint work coming out in spots, they respayed parts of it two times)
before the cout case dealer offer me a car that had been put in they name but only had 10 miles on it.

Think I'm right in saying that they have also done a Rover 75 review in their best used car buys.

Bernard wrote:

James.uk wrote:
Personally I was glad when the Asian cars started turning up cos they lasted more than 4 years without your feet going through the floor and having to tack new sills on every spring..
...

....like the Datsun Cherry, for example!

Agree with the rest of what you say though.

I had a 1982 Datsun Cherry, and it was a cracking little car. Only problem I had with it was that the front calipers would seize up occasionally, and you only knew this because it was going through a set of brake pads a month!