Jean Hertzberg writes:
>I can sympathize- My 68 B also runs hot in summer for no real good reason.
>However, your compression numbers don't look too good. It's probably ok to
>keep driving in the short term, but you will need to pull the head to see
>what's what. You may see something obvious indicating a bad head gasket,
>but more likely you have a burned valve or two.
>Any machine shop that will recondition the head will tell you which valves
>are bad, or you can get a valve spring compressor and look for yourself.
>If you can trust your machine shop, I'd just put the head in for a valve
>grind, and see what they come back to you with.
>
Good advice, but I'd add one caveat. Unleaded gass seems to make
these heads rather unhappy. I had to have all the valve seats in my '69 BGT
replaced because they had receded enough to cause problems. This can run
and extra $200 or so.
I suspect that all vehicles designed for leaded gas are going to
need new valve seats eventually. Their cylinder heads are just too soft.
I'm seeing the same thing happening to our 72 Landcruiser.
FYI, if your valves seem to always be tight when you go to adjust
them, valve recession is probably happening. This was my warning with the
MG.
Dave Ambrose
dave@pacdata.com
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