Hi Colin,
You've diagnosed it alright. Leaky head gasket or cracks in the
head casting. Those bubbles in the overflow are the giveaway;
combustion gasses in the coolant. A way to make sure is to have a
mechanic stick an exhaust gas tester into the radiator and check for
carbon monoxide when the engine is running but it's a waste of money.
I dunno if valve recession can cause cracks. I suppose it depends on
how far the recession goes into the port. In any event, I had a couple
of cracks in the squish area of the head I'm running on my '69 B now.
They were repaired by the plug method. No probs in 3 yrs of running.
My money's on a leaking head gasket but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to
have the head magnafluxed.
Cheers,
CR
Colin Brown wrote:
> I have now done some 16,000 fast & furious road miles using Valvemaster UCL
> since leaded patrol became a no-no, so I have been watching carefully for
> signs of VSR. ( BLMC 'B' 1.8 motor)
SNIP
> There may be no connection, but I have suddenly found that I am losing up to
> 1.5Pints of water during a 2 hour run, previously the level would stay an inch
> or so down from the filler neck for months at a time. So today I rigged a
>plastic
> catch bottle and sure enough in 10 minutes collected a half pint of overflow.
> I am more worried by the steady trickle of bubbles through this overflow even
> on tickover,
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