Knit 1, Pearl 1

Having just spend last weekend doing the head gasket on my son's Peugeot 106 I felt less than happy when the MIL light came on the Astra last night. It's always lost some coolant "somewhere" but other than that it's run pretty well over the years. The Vauxhall dealer simply taking a "wait and see" approach, which translates to "rather than fix a minor (leak) problem we'll wait until it goes bang and charge you sh*t loads".
 
I pulled (and cleared) the codes. "Cylinder 3 misfire", and, it required about a litre of water to get the coolant level right. I started to suspect a head gasket. So armed with a credit card, I drove to the local factors. On the way, it started to misfire quite badly..., and then miraculously run properly..., and run just fine on the way back too. I bought nothing, but ordered plenty.
 
I pulled (and cleared) the codes again. "Cylinder 3 misfire".

Ok. Check the oil - absolutely no water there and no creamy stuff in the rocker chamber. Check the water - perfectly clear & red. Final check, do a sniff-test using the bit of kit I bought last week to confirm the 106's head gasket failure.

Blue. Check again. Blue. Rev engine. Blue. Wait for fans to come on. Blue. No yellow "you-have-CO2-in-your-coolant". This confused me somewhat.

Ok, remove all plugs and do a compression test. 230 psi across the board. Now I'm stuffed and I give up - nothing says there's a head gasket failure. So, I clean the plugs and put them back in, fire up the motor to move it back to the road and immediately there's a solid misfire. Bugger, have I just trashed the ignition pack with all the ins and outs?

I pulled the codes. "Cylinder 1 misfire". Hang on, it was 3 last time wasn't it? I remove the plugs (again) and put plug 1 into hole 2 and 3 into hole 4. Fire up the motor, solid misfire and "Cylinder 2 misfire" AND "Cylinder 4 misfire". Whoa! Remove plugs and put 2 into hole 4 and 1 into 3. "Cylinder 1 misfire" AND "Cylinder 3 misfire".

 Ah ha.

I manage to find two old NGK's from my old Arkley kit-car kicking around the garage floor and replace 1 and 3. Bingo. No misfire.








Four Out Of Six Ain't Bad.


Things to do:
  1. Service the car. Stop ignoring the "INSP" light.
  2. Try and work out how two plugs could suddenly fail in five minutes.
  3. Explain why I no longer need all the bits I ordered.
  4. Un-book Thursday and Friday annual leave that I begged and pleaded to take off.
  5. Smash the two plugs into a thousand pieces with my 4 pound lump hammer.
 And, I think I found the tiny coolant leak from the thermostat housing...

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