Cylinder head - too far gone?

[Benjy911]

My dad's old Renault recently had the head gasket go so he he has had it skimmed, but he has sent me a picture and it looks a bit of a mess. Is it too far gone?

[stevieturbo]

Random photo.

What do you perceive to be the actual problem ?

And if there is a problem, there is certainly nothing that cannot easily be repaired.

[Benjy911]

I assume he means the corrosion on the valve.

[andyiley]

Looks more like carbon deposits that can be cleaned off to me.

[Steve_D]

The OP is probably to young to have ever been involved in an old fashioned de-coke. Looks to be all that is required.

Steve

[TheRealFingers99]

Even if it needs a new valve or two, they're generally less than a tenner a pop.

[stevieturbo]

The only thing not clear...is valve depth into the seat.

Without seeing others, hard to say. The exhaust valve does look quite deep.

But really...a simple clean up will make that look nice again, or as said new valves are usually cheap, especially for something old like that ( if still available of course )

[DVandrews]

A 30 degree or 15 degree correction cut will sort out any valve recession.

It just needs a heavy decoke and probably a light cut to the seat and light reface of the seat in the valve. Heavy deposits are sometimes indicative of higher than usual oil consumption.

Spin the valves in a lathe or a drill in a clamp and use an old lathe tool to remove the deposits, follow up with abrasive paper, don't touch the seats or stems. Finish with scotch brite.

Dave

[Benjy911]

Thank you to all.

It's gone to have the valves ground out and re seated.

It's a Renault 12TS engine which is in my Renault 10 so it's probably done quite a few miles as it came out of a scrapper a couple of years ago.