Perkins 3.152 engines

Is this a fault that else anyone has encountered? This engine is not in a tractor but is in a JCB406 inductrial loader and is under heavy (full) load a lot of its time. In the 35 and 135 it is probably not uner the same load and maybe the problem doesn't occur to the same extent. Also tractors have the AD3.152 variant which has a lower compression ratio than the industrial D3.152 version we have. Don't know if there are other differences in teh engines. In the tractors the engine has always been regarded as very robust and reliable so I was very surprised to learn it had a problem like this.

If nothing else it might pay to be very careful when refitting heads to these engines and to make sure you have the current torquing recommendations which I'm told have been "revised" at some point.

In our case, the crack is between the 1 o' clock stud hole and No2 cylinder (1 o' clock when looking towards front of engine) This is apparently the classic location for it and is not really regarded as repairable. So a new block might well be called for, which is more than a touch depressing. In future I will make a point of looking for this cracking if I have to deal with any of these engines that have a blown gasket.

Maybe this is useful to someone.