ended up !

i had a post up a while ago named head gasket , where i thought the head gasket was gone and i put inn Kseal and it worked , well it did for a while but i went back to loosing water slowly
i decided to put it into the local garage for repair as i am up to my eye balls in work myself , the reply from the garage was nothing wrong with the gasket but three cracks in the head , a further inspection by a repair company revieled that a further two cracks have been found and whilst they could fix it they would offer no guarentee
so a new head was now the issue , well for me they are like hens teeth and the only one i could find was about the £500 , my garage sorced a second hand engine complete ready to go with 71,000 on it for £150 plus vat so that was duly delivered and fitted along with new clutch oil and filter anti freeze , new enging runs great and well happy with my bill at £800 including vat
why are the twin cam heads so hard to find , having said that after owning around 6 jimnies and another six or so sj,s i have never had any engine problems so maybe thats the reason lol

I remember reading about that! Good that you have got it all sorted properly now.

I'm surprised that certain parts for the Jimny are at such a premium already.

However, never despair with cracked engine parts - I can tell you that (almost) EVERYTHING is repairable.
I have a pre-war car, and parts for that are so rare they're literally like trying to find rocking-horse droppings.
Last year I was tipped-off about an engine for sale £3,500 complete with g'box, g''box-extension, carbs etc It seemed too good to be true and I took a chance and bought it 'blind'.

On getting it home and stripping it down, I immediately forund one carb was scrap, a new starter-ring gear was needed, the pistons were new but one of them had been butchered and scored one bore badly, and there were other anomolies.
However the worst thing was a 9" frost -damage crack in the block with a secondary crack leading off to a side-plate cover mounting hole that had been Heli-coiled.
I had this Laser-welded by EMP Tooling in Hampshire. Laser generates virtually no heat other than at the weld so is ideal for welding awkward stuff like ancient cast iron.





There was some good news however, the crank and rods were very special, and themselves are worth the $3.5k I paid for the whole engine and g'box assy!!!
The gearbox is mint internally and itself worth another £1.5k.

Stupidly I didnt take a photo of the welded-up crack before I painted the block, but it can be seen in the next picture of the upturned block as a reflection of light, and the hole for the cover-plate is still welded up (I will drill and tap that later)




EMP Engineering were brilliant, they showed me around their workshops for the best part of an hour! - it was fascinating. They showed me stuff that just a few years ago would have been considered 'unrepairable' and scrapped. About the only thing they said they couldn't repair was plastic.
The biggest engine repair they did was on a very rare and valuable Edwardian racing car that totally blew the entire engine to pieces. Most of the bits were found on the collected off the track and the whole lot welded back together!

The weld cost me £250 which, if you consider a new (repro) block at nearly £1.5k was a bargain

Theres a technique, think it was called cold soldering or something for repairing cast iron engine blocks and stuff. I seem to remember seeing it on some classic car show.

They grind out the crack or hole to a uniform shape then cut a thick bit of steel to fit it. They stick it in the hole and drill a couple of holes round it, tap them and screw a couple of bolts in, this locks the patch in place. Then they continue this all round the patch, drill and tap a hole, screw a bolt in, cut its head off until its all sealed up! Amazing!
The programme was having some old prewar block fixed and the method is probably overkill for a puny alloy thermostat housing but it looked incredible!

No. Laser welding is a totally different thing.
I know what you mean though; its a very old 'traditional' technique that is almost dying out.
Metal stitching is basically drilling a series of holes across a crack and inserting special 'grips' that pull the two sides of the crack together.
It's claimed that the technique makes a gas and liquid tight joint, but I've seen many prewar blocks that have a small bead of oil or water appearing on the outside of a block, oozing through a small hole..
It sometimes cannot repair more 'difficult' situations as laser welding can, and is also hugely expensive by comparison as I found out wehen I looked into getting my block repaired.
Metal stitching technique


Laser welding is definitely the way forward!

I'm surprised you had such a job finding a cylinder head. Its the same as used on any other Suzuki with the 1.3 dohc engine (VVT dependent) and I'm pretty sure the 1.5s and 1.6s are the same too. I have a couple of complete engines on my scrap heap.

i tride along with the garage severel scrap yards but what we got back was they were not prepaired to break a whole engine for just the head , and given that the price of an engine complete was £150 it sempt the best option as it was by now just a push inn and out job not to mention i got a new clutch so all inn i am happy with the out come , but saying that i agree with you, lol its not as if the jimny is a scarce model on the uk roads , round my neck of the woods spares seem to be like hens teeth