Engine overhaul or replace?

[citroenxm]

no no, he wants a block, so its OUT OF MY WAY...

[XMBloke]

Overhaul or replace?
All depends on whether you have the skills needed, the inclination, the time, space and equipment to do it yourself. It will be cheaper than any garage but major operations always take longer than anticipated - especially on an XM.
If the car is a 'keeper' and in good condition, I would do it yourself because a garage bill to investigate, remove, strip down, rebuild, refit will exceed market value of the car. Just as an example, Autodata book time to replace headgasket on the 2 litre petrol turbo XM is 10 hours. A full rebuild of engine is just over 26 hours labour assuming there's no delays caused by seized fixings and other issues. Now factor in parts, VAT and the bill will probably look like a phone number.

[southerner]

Head casket and a head skimmed, and don't forget these engines have water heat exchanges/transfers to the oil, it possible that the oil has a blockage some where and making the oil hotter than it should be. resulting in the heat remaining in the water.

[kingp]

If I was doing all that the heat exchanger on the oil filter would be binned

[Costadelglosta]

I'll get in touch once back in the rainy cold uk this weekend.

[White Exec]

During normal driving, the oil reaches a higher temperature than the coolant - so heat is transferred from oil to water, and not the other way round. Removing the heat-exchanger is most likely to raise oil temperature, and is usually done where the heat-exchanger has sprung an internal leak, allowing engine oil to be injected into the cooling system.

2.1 heat-exchangers seem more reliable in this respect than the larger version on the 2.5, which has something of a reputation. The maintained use of good quality coolant mix is important here.

[kingp]

As in any vehicle as there are competing metals in the system that the coolant inhibits reactions with. Aren't xud's using iron blocks with alu heads just as bad for this?

Unless your thrashing yours about or in a region with heat over 20'c most of the year the oil cooler isn't of massive importance. Oh unless you tow of course.