well today i was able to finish tearing the motor down all the way, every thing looked good. i could tell that someone had already been in it, by the permatex that was on the head gasket. how stupid can you be im surprised that the head gaskets lasted as long as iv owned the truck. i tell you ive been patching this thing up since i bought it, i couldnt believe that someone could do so much damage to a truck, needless to say something so stupid. i have a question about something, why do you have to replace the head bolts when you do a top end job, cant you just clean them up real good and run a die on them to refresh the threads. ive rebuilt alot of chevy engines and you could reuse the head bolts. whats so different about these engines. i realized today what everybody was talking about having a shop crain to put the heads back on with, man these things are beasts. i know there no small block chevy head. lol.

 

I have found many things applied to head gaskets in my years as a heavy truck and equipment mechanic. Worst that comes to mind was when I found someone had put 3M weatherstrip adhesive on both sides of a 350 Cummins head gasket. This gasket is solid steel with only water and oil grommets. Try to get that head off, I put 2 junk injectors back in, put 2 head bolts in about half way and hit the starter. Made one heck of a noise when it turned loose.

 

what kind of valve seals do they have on the valves. the reason im asking is someone told me there were different kind that they put on these engines. is this true are when i buy my gasket set will it come with the wright ones ? does both intake and exhaust have seals or is there seals on intake and shields on the exhaust?

 

mechmagcn thats about the funniest thing ive ever herd of. lol lol weather stripping on a head gasket lol lol.

 

Head bolts have to be replaced because they have a tendency to stretch. On many engines nowadays, they use "torque to yield" or "stretch to yield" bolts. They're both the same, it's just a different name. I don't think the IDI uses stretch to yield, but you should still replace them if they're not new.

If you re-use head bolts, they may not stretch consistently and could cause different clamping pressures across the head. If there is enough difference, you could blow a head gasket or even crack the cylinder head.

 

If I ever need to pull my heads, for the insurance I'd pick up a set of ARP studs.

 

people are stupid and you cant fix it, and yes i have stupid miss spelled in my sig, so the stupid people out there can understand it

 

LOL! When I read the title to this thread my first thought was "I don't know...." and about half a dozen dumb things I've done in my lifetime came immediately to mind....

Can't say I've done anything quite as dumb as weatherstripping on a head gasket though.

I have coated head gaskets with a thin layer of brush-on Permatex Ultra Copper before putting them in. Worked very well....

 

ive heard of people putting the brush on copper permatex on head gaskets before, but ive never used it. im talking about black rubber rtv silicone, when i pulled the heads there was a dried bead of silicone around the inside of the block in the valley. i guess the beads that formed in the inside of the cylinders were burned away at startup. yes i thought the wether stripping was funny.

 

One of the main reasons to replace the head bolts is the most common reason the head gasket failed is because the head bolts stretched.
A very common problem is the rear two cylinders tend to get more of the oil out of the CDR valve, the motor oil has more BTU content than fuel.
This causes excessive cylinder pressures in the back cylinders when it burns, which stretch the rear head bolts more than the front ones are.

Every manual I have ever read specify the block must be clean, dry and oil free before installing the head gaskets. Most also specify wiping the block deck and head surfaces with a solvent like acetone before you assemble the head gasket and head on the block.

I also think the ARP head studs are a good idea.
I got mine out of Summit Racing for 235 dollars, the yield strength is 220,000 pounds.
I have had no problems running boost levels over 20 PSI with them.

 

thanks dave for the info, i was hopeing you would chime in on this one. not that i didnt believe what everybody else had to say too. lol . theres one other question i would like for you to answer dave, what is the difference on the valve seals. they say they have a long and a short valve seal. wich ones are the best?

 

I measured and reused my bolts when I did my heads. NP's in 60K miles.

I've been in on conversations about these bolts for yrs. From all the info I've read/gathered. These are NOT TTY bolts. They're just undersized for the job.

My '85 is not turbo'd, so I didn't bother with studs. My 93 has a Sidewinder II on it. When I go in for those, it'll be getting a set of Ken's Studs.

As for: How Stupid Can You Be.

When I did my heads, I was just about to climb into the truck to do a first start after buttoning up the IP lines. As I walked by the bench to get in the cab, what do I see sitting there? The LIFTER SPIDER!!!! DOH!!!!!

 

Must be a lot of speed readers around here skipping words. I said weatherstrip ADHESIVE. But when it comes to trying to seal a leaky Cummins with loose sleeves, some people would try anything!

 

I'd take a sloppy Cummins over a tight Detroit any day

 

The first engine I worked in in the late '60s was an old Rambler flathead six. I was working at a Chevron station in high school, nights and weekends, mostly pumping gas. On Saturdays I got to help the mechanic, a grizzled old street fighter with half his ear bitten off named Jay. Jay assigned me to pull the head on the Rambler to replace a gasket that was blown between two cylinders. On a flathead, that's an easy enough job for a newbie. You'd think anyway. Got all the bolts out but the head wouldn't move.

"Oh Jaaaayyyy?"

He came over, frustrated and ready to rake me over the coals for needing help on such a simple job. After a couple of hour, he set down his hammer, wiped the sweat off his forhead and let loose with a string of words my young ears had never heard. Some of them are still a mystery.

We literally lifted the front of that car by the head. We ran the engine with no head bolts. We practically melted the head with a torch. We broke chunks off the edges of that head with chisels. We were ready to get dynamite but in the end we just installed a used engine.

Some moron had used about a whole can of that goopy red Permatex on the copper head gasket of the Rambler. You know, the stuff that hardens to the consistency of stone. The stuff that will be here long after thing else has turned to dust. 10 billion years from now, long after that block has rotted away and the copper gasket has turned to powder, there will be a head-gasket shaped concretion of Permatex waiting from some future archaeologist to dig up and wonder about.