Not the best of days!

[Lord Croker]

Having sorted out some electrical issues on my Mini, a modified 1981 998 HL, I set off into town, confident in the fact that the voltmeter now showed 14 volts when charging, instead of the previous 11 volts, even the weather was dry, I was happy! I was accelerating up a slight hill & all hell broke loose, at first I thought a big end had let go, judging by the clatter that came from the engine, but at idle, there was no mechanical noise, just an uneven tickover. I retired to base & first removed the cylinder head, a great chunk had blown out of the head gasket between number 1 & 2 cylinders. The head gasket was fitted only 18,000 miles ago with a freshly skimmed modified head, the block had been checked for flatness, there is regular maintenance of ignition timing etc & I don't run a ridiculously high compression ratio (9.5:1). The head or block have not warped, so I guess it's just 'one of those things'. There is a good side to this, at 110,000 miles, with original pistons, rings & bores, there is no lip at the top of the bore & I can still see the 'cross hatch' markings of the original honing. Since I bought the car with only 17,000 miles on the clock, I have always used upper cylinder lubricant. I was going to include a photo of the dramatic gasket failure, but that will take me longer to get right than doing a Mini re-shell. (Some people seem to be able to include images as attachments, how is that done?)

[SteveG]

When you post, scroll down and next to ''filename' click 'choose file' then find where the photo is located on your computer. Then click 'add file'

[Lord Croker]

Thanks for the info, I will try that next time.