bill_gj
Tired and irritable
- Messages
- 1,423
- Location
- Essex, UK
My exprience was with a Toyota Estima/Emina - these are well known for cooling problems and subsequent cracked heads.
It started showing high temperatures if I loaded it up a bit, so I empties the system and refilled with the right water/antifreeze mix, and followed the K-Seal instructions.
Then, one day, the gauge just went to max and I had steam pouring from the header tank vent.
No point in delaying the inevitable, so I took the head off, anyone familiar with these motors will know what a complete PITA this is.
What I found was: three of four cylinders had cracks between the valve seats in the head.
On cleaning up the block face to look for more problems, I discovered that there were passageways that were completely blocked with what may have been a combination of rust AND K-Seal.
After a bit of probing, I found the cleaned-out holes were about 8mm dia in the block face. When I matched-up the new head gasket I found that Toyota used the gasket to control coolant flow as the gasket holes were only about 3.5mm dia.
Replacement head fitted - system purged with central heating cleaner - been OK since.
Moral - K-Seal certainly plugs holes, but sometimes you may need the hole! It may be well worth a good flushing before you use the stuff.
It started showing high temperatures if I loaded it up a bit, so I empties the system and refilled with the right water/antifreeze mix, and followed the K-Seal instructions.
Then, one day, the gauge just went to max and I had steam pouring from the header tank vent.
No point in delaying the inevitable, so I took the head off, anyone familiar with these motors will know what a complete PITA this is.
What I found was: three of four cylinders had cracks between the valve seats in the head.
On cleaning up the block face to look for more problems, I discovered that there were passageways that were completely blocked with what may have been a combination of rust AND K-Seal.
After a bit of probing, I found the cleaned-out holes were about 8mm dia in the block face. When I matched-up the new head gasket I found that Toyota used the gasket to control coolant flow as the gasket holes were only about 3.5mm dia.
Replacement head fitted - system purged with central heating cleaner - been OK since.
Moral - K-Seal certainly plugs holes, but sometimes you may need the hole! It may be well worth a good flushing before you use the stuff.