Tag Archives: changing fiat punto head gasket

Tuesday 31st July 2012 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

… all day and so I missed the glorious weather.

142.2 amp-hours in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the surplus electrical energy that I create, meaning that the water temperature rose from 44°C to off the scale (over 70°C) during the day.

And it was still over 70°C when I came back at 22:00. That must have been hot.

But today I was at Liz and Terry’s finishing off Liz’s car.

And we reassembled it and much to everyone’s surprise, it fired up straight away and ran (so Liz says) better than it has run for a while.

We took it for a test-drive and it seemed to be fine, although the brakes are a little “hit and miss”, so we ordered new brakes all round and we’ll fit those when they arrive.

We also changed the dampers on the back as they were rather soft and there was a pair hanging around.

And here’s a surprise!

Too much slack in the 19mm socket, and yet an 18mm was too small. This led to a rummage around in the old toolbox and a 3/4″ AF socket was produced – and that fitted perfectly.

Imperial bolts on a 2000 FIAT – who would ever have thought that!

Anyway, Liz reckons that the ride has stiffened up considerably and that is good news too. As a reward, she cooked a good dinner and made some vegan chocolate brownies for me.

The car had better run alright after all of this.

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Tuesday 24th July 2012 – CALIBURN DIDN’T FLY …

… home as quickly as he normally does from Liz and Terry’s this evening.

Hardly surprising – there’s half a tonne of stones in the back.

You know how I’m rebuilding the wall of the lean to and how I’m running out of stones – it just so happens that Terry has a barn-full that need moving

So having had an early start at … gulp … 06:40 this morning I was round at Liz and Terry’s for shortly after 09:00 and we set to work to dismantle the engine on the FIAT.

And while it was comparatively straightforward, it took absolutely ages because there are all kinds of complications – cables and wires and plastic housings in the way and to take one thing off you need to remove two other things and to remove those two other things you need to move four other things, and so on. 

Highlight had to be taking off the plastic shroud that covers the timing belt cover.

Undo all of the screws and still the blasted thing won’t move.
Jack up the car and take off the wheel to see why …. ahhh, screw actually holds on the plastic mudguard.
After much manoeuvring, off comes the plastic mudguard, to find that the screw we are looking for is just half an inch away from the mudguard screw, but the mudguard is covering it so you can’t see it until you take off the mudguard. Why they couldn’t put the screw through the plastic mudguard from the outside to save us half an hour’s work I really don’t know.

So guess what I’ll be doing with an electric drill when I come to reassemble it

Yes, not reassembled yet. But everything is cleaned and smoothed down and ready.

What’s holding us up is that for doing many things, such as taking the plugs out with the cylinder head in situ, it’s near-on impossible and so seeing as we have the cylinder head off, we’ve ordered a full service kit and we’ll change everything before we reassemble it.

That way, it’s all done and dusted, and ready for the road. 

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