head gaskets

[KasaRyan at aol.com]

Well, i tore into my engine the other day, some of the center head bolts were 
slightly loose, but #7 was the one that was getting water into it.  When I 
pulled the head, the fel-pro 1010 gasket fire ring had pulled away from the 
material and into the bore on #7, and the #1 looked the same way.  I took it 
to a trusted engine builder, he took one look and said detonation.  I asked 
him if I really needed to retorque and he said not with modern gaskets, just 
racers using copper.  That's a good thing as I am using roller rockers that 
are too wide to allow access to the head bolts without taking them off.   He 
did sell me some felpro 1003 gaskets for way too much.  He said 40-55-70 was 
the torque sequence.  I got home and took the other head off and the gasket 
looked just as bad as the other one, although the bolts were all still tight. 
And nothing was leaking - yet.  I took everything apart, cleaned it all up, 
checked for any grooving in the heads, and put it together.  I suppose I will 
set my valves and reassemble today.

I am going to take edelbrock's advice and re-burn the chip with the factory 
timing and run 8 deg initial.  This is less than I was running and much less 
than the howell chip had before I started messing around.  I drove about 
10,000 miles on a chip with 36 total and more at cruise.  So I guess you can 
all learn now - you can have detonation without knock.  Knock is reeeelly bad 
detonation.  And I'm pretty sure you don't want to experiment with using 
cheap gas and burning a chip for same.  I think that's what did me in more 
than anything.

Thanks for listening to my electroyappin!
Ryan Hampl - a K-State Grad!    kasaryan at aol.com
139 Hoover Ct.                  Controls Engineer (tubes rule!)  
Salina, KS  67401               97 B12 / 86 V65 / 93chevy truck EFI 383
phone  (785) 825 5831           I'M ALWAYS FIRST TO THE GROCERY STORE!
http://hometown.aol.com/kasaryan/myhomepage/hotspot.html
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