K11 CG10 Overheating

My K11 keeps spitting out all its coolant when hot. I'm assuming it either has lots of air in the system which expands when hot, forcing out the coolant, or the head gasket has gone. It's done 179,000 miles by the way.

Is this a common problem? How hard is it to do the head gasket? Do I need to use new head bolts?

i usually test the H/G by filling the rad to the brim and checking for bubbles, and its pretty rare on k11,s,
have you done a H/G before ? and they are,nt stretchbolts

K11zies said:

My K11 keeps spitting out all its coolant when hot. I'm assuming it either has lots of air in the system which expands when hot, forcing out the coolant, or the head gasket has gone. It's done 179,000 miles by the way.


Is this a common problem? How hard is it to do the head gasket? Do I need to use new head bolts?

Click to expand...

Had a few lads I knew overfilled the expansion bottle with coolant and when the car heats up it used to blow out the coolant

frank said:

i usually test the H/G by filling the rad to the brim and checking for bubbles, and its pretty rare on k11,s,
have you done a H/G before ? and they are,nt stretchbolts

Click to expand...

I've done a H/G on my Datsun Cherry in the past. That was an OHV engine though. Never done one on a chain driven DOHC engine. I asked about the bolts because there's a guy on ebay selling head gaskets, and he says you need new stretch bolts. Maybe he's just trying to earn an extra few bob.

I think I need to drive the car a bit more to see if it is still happening.

autodata says not to renew the bolts, but i always check the thread near the top just incase
and you should be ok if you,ve done an H/G before (the chains stay in the block and cant fall off)
the rad will never stay full btw, you need an air gap in the top of the rad because there,s no expansion bottle as such (its just a catchtank)

Finally got the head off tonight. What a job! It looks like the top of cylinder no2 is not as shiney as the others so maybe it wasn't sealing on the gasket properly. Hopefully this is the cause of the system pressurising and bubbling up inside etc. The H/G fell apart when I took it off.

K11zies said:

Finally got the head off tonight. What a job! It looks like the top of cylinder no2 is not as shiney as the others so maybe it wasn't sealing on the gasket properly. Hopefully this is the cause of the system pressurising and bubbling up inside etc. The H/G fell apart when I took it off.

Click to expand...

Do you have any pics of that?

baguete said:

Do you have any pics of that?

Click to expand...

Yes. The lack of shinyness isn't as noticeable in the pics. Look at the bottom half of the "circle" of cylinder 2.



The gasket



A scene of wanton K11idge

hmm, nothing obvious eh fwn, does the carbon deposit look different on cyl # 2 ? (they can get steamcleaned sometimes)

you can see where the gasket is all wrecked around cyl 1+2 where the water galleries are. did your car smoke when the coolant was dissapearing? by the looks of it thats the original gasket so whats the mileage?

Here is a picture of the head. Guess which cylinder has had water in it?



I hope it was just a faulty head gasket cos I should be able to fix it now.

Stani - the car has done 179,000 miles

yes thats the clincher, distinctly lighter colour eh

Well, it's back up and running now (there was a slight delay because we went away at the weekend). No more spitting out coolant at the moment, I suppose time will tell if it's permanently sorted. One slight concern is that it cut out whilst it was ticking over when warming up, and the "check engine" light came on. Hopefully this is because it's very low on fuel.

Thanks for the advice guys.

Just one last question. Is there any way of re-attaching the heat shield on the manifold? Whatever was holding it on before has rusted away.