Well, have had my mechanic mate have a look at the car today, and overall he's pretty happy with it. Says it needs the front end looking at - bushes etc, but generally all is good. Very pleased with its grunt and performance. He has worked on these for many years and knows a fair bit about them - nice mate to have!
Told him about the radiator spitting out fluid as described earlier on here, and he topped her up with motor running and noticed that it continued to bubble, meaning it was getting air from somewhere. So we suspect head gasket - would explain why it was pumping out fluid thru the overflow and leading to what I suspected to be unusually low levels - it was getting pressurised. At this stage we don't think it is significantly blown, but enough to cause some concern (i s'pose any head gasket leak is significant really) - so off with its head tomorrow.
There's no sign of oil in the water or vice versa.
We were going to take head off anyway to check things out and clean it up, and refresh valve seals etc so this is no big stress (provided we don't find any cracks!), and we will use the opportunity for a bit of port polishing etc. Nice to detect the issue before any real damage was done - we think!
BTW, and off the thread a bit - what colour green (code?) is used for the Morris standard engine paint - I'll respray the head while it's off too. It's the light almost metallic looking green.
Will keep you posted on progress.
Thanks for reading!
Peter.
