Off with its head!

After a post on the MG Experience forum and lots of friendly advice, I decided to remove the cylinderhead to have a little look inside. I thought it worth the extra work to verify that all's well in there and also get the head pressure tested. Of course, while it's off and at the local engine specialist (Ivor Searle) it might as well be converted to unleaded.

Everything looked to be in pretty good condition once the head was off, the pistons don't seem show any movement at all in the bores and the bores themselves appear to be in fine condition with no visible wear at all.

The head is showing a few areas of corrosion, especially in the middle two cylinders and there's that bit of corrosion in the front inlet port but in all it appears to be fine (at least of the up to as many as 5 other heads I've examined in my life, this one's not all that different!!!)

Here are some photos:




















As you can see, the old head gasket stuck like glue to the mating face of the cylinderhead which is a pain, but hopefully won't take long to clean it off...

There is a gallery of high-res pictures here.