Crap man. Any clue why you are blowing HG? What studs are in the car and which gasket you running?

 

.........

....and this hole time I've been removing the hood and damaging the corners by placing it against the wall with cardboard. Adding more to the bucket of the stupid things I do

 

The last time it was already kinda on its way out when I bought the car. Last time the head was warped a few thou so I had it shaved .003" to clean it up and threw in ARP 2000 studs and a factory gasket. I'm thinking it's either a surface defect on the block's deck (which wasn't warped when I measured it) or because the headgasket was compressed a second time when I rebuilt the engine after I lost rod bearing 4.

Just to be sure it wasn't something simple it didn't burp out any bubbles when I bled it earlier today and I checked the torque on all the head studs and they were all still at 80lbs.

Whatever it was, both the head and block are going to get a clean shave and a new gasket will go in again. If it happens again after its back together then I've got no clue what could be causing it.

 

I take it off too. Gives lots of room to lay over the engine and reach things on the backside. Luckily the hood is aluminum so no harm if the paint gets chipped, plus since mine is silver you can't tell anyway lol

 

Nope, the radiator core support is spot welded to the front engine rails. You can save some weight by removing this support and going with a tubular frame.

 

Was looking at it more this morning and saw that. Thanks for the confirmation. Kind of a bummer, it's extremely convenient when you can pull from the front. It had crossed my mind to tube forward of the frame rails in a couple years. Definitely going to consider it more now as pulling the engine would only take an hour or two if the front could come off.

 

when they decked the head, did they take the .003 off all at once, or did they go .002 then .001? My Machine shop always does a final pass at .001" cut to ensure the best finish. Reusing the head gasket probably didn't help either.

 

Done at the shop I used to work at, watched my boss do it. Two cuts, first was a brush pass and the second was .002. So most likely ended a bit under .003 at the end. It's a pretty new Rottler machine too so I doubt there's any issue with the machine work done on the head. Head gasket had 500 miles on it and I've reused MLS gaskets before without issue. But that's not to say that reusing is wasn't the cause.


Got the new splitter cut out in the past hour. Just need to clean up the holes and work on getting the cables to the right length etc but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

 

Yeah, machine work sounds fine. I just know I've had machine shops tell me they just knock .005" off and send 'em. No thanks...haha

 

how did you measure the wing angle? i never ran above 10 degrees and i couldnt make enough front df to balance that out.

 

 

Cell phone clinometer?

 

 

yeah thats why i asked, wanted to make sure you were laying a straight edge over it and not something else...i didnt realize it could go that steep