The Moment my Car Reaches 400,000 KM (250,000 miles)

[Smart_Guy]

Will do

On this engine, they say the head gasket is replaced every 250k km. It is now 400k km and from the looks of it, it hasn't been replaced. I hope the source is wrong.

 

[Celery]

If your head gasket was leaking it could leak water too, sometimes both and they get mixed.

If you do replace the head gasket you'll have to replace the head bolts.

 

[Smart_Guy]

That's what's been puzzling me. I know head gasket failure cause loss of coolant, loss of power, foul spark plugs and overheating too. Non of the above is there with the engine oil leak I'm having now. That's why the head gasket is not the first on my list here (for now).

I could be wrong tho. But yeah, as least loss of coolant should be there, right?

 

[root]

It depends on the nature of the head gasket failure as to what the symptoms are, it would be very unusual for the head gasket to have cracked of warped in a way that would allow oil out of the block/head sandwich, but not let oil or water to mix or either of those into the cylinders. but not impossible.

Replacing the head gasket is a big job, not least because it involves.
Removing air intake assembly,
Removing exhaust assembly,
draining all the oil,
draining all the water,
removing rocket covers,
removing timing belt,
removing engine head (complete with all spark plugs and valves)

Then replacing head gasket (the part is surprisingly cheap).
then replacing the timing belt.
(and it makes good sense to replace the water pump at the same time and check condition of idle pulley bearings and tensioners etc)
replacing the stretch bolts that hold the head on (and tightening them to the specific torque, (which may require a torque wrench and an angle gauge after that.
refitting the timing belt can require specialist tools to lock the engine in place, then belt tensioning tools etc...
new oil, oil filters and new coolant...
parts and labour charges mean that it costs around £500 where I am.

In other news, I'm nearly catching up with your mileage too. 211,000 miles, so I expect to reach the quarter million miles in a couple of years...

My dads car has done somewhere around a half million miles now and it's still going fairly strong.

 

[Smart_Guy]

That's.. err... um...

I hope it's the timing cover at worst, not the head gasket

This engine uses a timing chain btw. It is a real engine, not like those new weaklings

I use another car as need presents itself. If not for that other car, this one would have had ~50k miles over the 250k I currently scored. Oh, since the time I took the video, I added ~800 miles to the clock. I do drive a lot. My life requires it.