Tragic story... two month old buggy dead??

Posts: 6 · Joined: 31 Jan 2008 Posts: 6 Pictures: 0

Hey everyone this is my first post, but I've been reading threads on Buggynews for about 4 months now. I'm from Puna on the Big Island of Hawaii and friends with PunaRambler on the 800cc buggy forum. Anyway, I have a 250cc Runmaster II mini-buggy which I got myself this Christmas, which now has a blown head gasket/warped head and possibly (hopefully not) seized. There are no good buggy suppliers in Hawaii, so I ordered this buggy off eBay and got it through SLE in Tennessee and had it shipped out here (which was by far the cheapest, oddly). It ran like a charm for a while, but while checking over the buggy and tightening everything down, I didn't really think about the fact that the folks who had put it together had zip-tied the radiator hose to the frame, so it had no real slack between where the hose was tied and the engine. So one day while I'm rambling along, swing-arm flexing like it should, pulls the hose off of the engine and dumps put all my coolant. Before I notice this, my buggy is smoking like an Amsterdam cafe and I have to push it to PunaRambler's house. After letting it cool off, we fill it up with some more coolant and take off for another run (probably a bad idea). We are rolling for about 5 minutes when the buggy just stops. I start it back up, and it seems to start fine, but as soon as I touch the gas and a load is put on the engine it sputters and stops. We push it back to my friend's house and discover that there is coolant in the oil by draining it, so we pull the head. The metal gasket kind of springs apart and the two halves definitely are not flat to each other. I put a metal straight edge to my head and it seemed pretty flat, but I also noticed the cam journals seemed a little scratched up. So my question is this, do you think it's possible that I could just put on a new head gasket, fill it up with oil and coolant and that it would just run? I was told that I could use a piece of glass and some very fine grit sandpaper and do a wet sand on the one side to check the head for warping (the raised spots shiny) but does this sound like a good idea? If my head is warpped, can it be shaved or do I have to buy a new one Crying or Very sad

? I have no real experience with buggy engines so I'm not sure how much abuse they can handle but I would hate to destroy my new $3000 toy over a stupid mistake, so any advice from more experienced members is greatly appreciated. Please help me save my buggy!

Posts: 4286

need to lay a straight edge across the head and see if there is a gap any where. if there is then you can shave it only a very small amount. might go ahead and pull the cylinder to see if the rings are calapsed. as far as the cam goes, if there are marks on it then that meens there was no oil on the cam.

some emory cloth might take care of that.

Posts: 93

The glass-sandpaper method should work. I have used it alot on injectors in older truck engines that require much closer tolerances. I use a mirror and wet/dry sandpaper soaked with PB blaster. This is a guess but for aluminum I would use 400 grit paper you don't want to polish it just get it flat. Put the wet sandpaper on the front side of the mirror put the head on it and move it in a slow figure 8 pattern. Check it alot and stop as soon as you don't see any low spots. When you get it back together put a pressure tester on the radiator pump it up to about 5-10psi and leave it for about 30min (needs to be full of coolant) it should not leak down at all if it does find the leak and fix it. Note: use soapy water to check for leaks in the pressure tester itself, this will bite you. Don' forget to take a good look at the cylinder wall and piston while you have it apart.

Posts: 47

i would deffinatly check the rings and ring end gap. everytime a buggy has come in from abuse or in your case accident the rings are stuck or worn down real bad. as for the head just check if it's warped and do what the other post say you should be fine. don't forget to hone you cylinder if you put new rings in.
nathan
track and trail powersports