Hope Pete the Je, Jeee, Je ... American car doesn't read this!
Just want to pass this idea on as others might find it useful.
Having a spot of bother with the Disco. Changed the water pump a while back and was obviously not careful enough putting the hoses back because despite being in it's allotted clip, the heater hose was touching the water pump pulley and the hose lost. I didn't notice it starting to get hot, it behaved perfectly normally until I noticed the temperature gauge was off the scale. Not a drop of water left in the engine and it was VERY hot. Let it cool down a bit added water and limped home.
Investigations the following day revealed yet another blown head gasket and warped head. Had the head skimmed and was prepairing to put it together when I noticed what looked suspiciously like a crack in the block. Getting rather worried now ... new engine time.
Then I remembered seeing dye being used as a penetration test to detect cracks. Jump on the internet and most of the kits are silly money (although one place did later phone me back with a price of 30 quid ... still expensive for three aerosol cans), so after a little lateral thinking I came up with IPA, cyan ink jet printer ink and talcum powder.
I carefully fractured a piece of aluminium so I knew is was cracked, cleaned it with IPA, applied the ink and gave it a little while to soak in. I then wiped off the excess ink, cleaned with an IPA dampened rag and applied the talc.
After about 30 seconds a red line where the crack was appeared in the dusting of talc, along with a couple of others which I couldn't see. Well chuffed at this I repeated the process on the Disco block and no red line. I'm not saying it's fool proof, but I recon it's a pretty good indication that the head's OK ... breaths a sigh of relief!
