It may not come as a surprise but currently the P38 is not working very well. Although I have been driving it past summer, well actually at the end of summer to the Alps. I couldn't drive it during summer because the transfer case and torque converter needed replacement...
This round trip of 2500km was uneventful apart from overheating brakes and so I got over the p38 paranoia and thought I could just take off anywhere.
That was until I wanted to go to the Belgian Ardennes, mid highway all of a sudden steam in front and back. With my heart in my throat I was conveniently able to pull over at a gas station.
There I discovered the radiator top right hose came off and the coolant was gone. I re-collected myself and took my tools, bought bottles of water to fill her up and drove home at a slow pace.
When I got home I parked it and I didn't want anything to do with it , i was gutted.
About a week or so later I started to look into it. I ordered a tester and fluid to check for a head gasket failure. The fluid turned yellow although it took quite a while.
I attached a transparent hose between the top of the radiator and the expansion tank to better see the coolant. There are bubbles in there, sometimes steady sometimes none. Also the cooling hoses become a bit stiffer with a closed cooling system, that's not abnormal if they don't become to hard.
I bought an amazon pressure tester and I'm losing pressure. Just don't know where yet. So I started to look around for parts.
I ordered a new water pump, o-ring thermostat, bypass tube behind the engine and a new radiator in aluminium, head gasket and head bolts more gaskets... The problem with the diesel is that when the heads are warped they cannot be skimmed or you are at risk of getting cracks in the head where the swirl chambers are.
New heads I thought were unobtanium, but so it happens that AMC just made a new batch of heads. I went ahead and bought one straight away. Even if I don't need it I'll be happy to have one available just in case.
Hopefully I'll be able in the coming weeks to further troubleshoot the issue and if not go ahead with the cylinder head replacement.
I you read my blog you probably already noticed I actually overhauled the engine 2 years ago. I inspected the cylinder head back then and I knew it was not entirely in spec for the longitudinal measurement. On top off my head I think it cannot exceed 0.10mm. In my case it was somewhere in between 0,10 and 0.15mm. Because the heads cannot be skimmed according to Rave I decided to take my chances and install it anyway. Which worked up until now.
I almost have all the parts available and I'll try try to troubleshoot a bit more before I pull the plug on the head.
