Oil leaking from head gasket XUD9

Ed · Unread post by Ed » 03 Oct 2008, 16:29

I suffered a big loss of engine oil the other day on the motorway. Got the car recovered and have just traced the leak to the headgasket right behind the cambelt. With the car running you can see oil start to weap out at quite a rate.

I know this should really be a new head gasket job, but as the car is on 175k, and is worth very little, I am reluctant to do this.

Any bodge fixes I can do to patch the leak?

Chemical metal?

citronut · Unread post by **citronut** » 03 Oct 2008, 17:40

the simple answer NO, are you sure its H/G and not the cam oil seal as this can be fixed quite easily,

regards malcolm

uncle buck · Unread post by **uncle buck** » 03 Oct 2008, 17:46

I don't think there is much chance of fixing the leak other than doing the Head Gasket. I'm pretty sure that there's a main oil gallery in the position you mention, the gasket must bee letting oil past...if its not coming from the camshaft oil seal as malcolm pointed out.

Out petrol 1.4 Xsara had the same problem & someone had attempted a fix on that with copious amounts of silicone, needles to say it hadn't worked. The amount of time they must of spent carefully positioning & shaping the silicone would have been better put towards replacing the gasket.

Ed · Unread post by Ed » 03 Oct 2008, 18:04

Cheers guys.

It's definitely the gasket. I hoped it was the camseal, but after stripping away and cleaning, I can actually see the point in the gasket that it is leaking from.

I'll have a go at tightening up the headbolts before I start stripping down.

Xaccers · Unread post by **Xaccers** » 03 Oct 2008, 20:37

Changing the gasket is more time consuming than expensive.
Jim and I replaced the head on Cassy in about 2 days parked up outside my house in the street

Unread post by **Peter.N.** » 03 Oct 2008, 21:48

XUD head gaskets do fail like that sometimes, the only upside of doing it is that it should be good for another 150k miles, do have the head machined though.

citronut · Unread post by **citronut** » 03 Oct 2008, 22:03

tightening the bolts is a NO NO, as you might shear one or more off, then you will be up a creack without a padle

regards malcolm