Head gasket

[zachdeagle16]

I was thinking about swapping to a regular cometic headgasket, cause my stock one blew. I built my engine about 1500 miles ago, and I had my block decked. So should i be safe just to throw a cometic h\g in there, ?

 

[Quasimondo]

What caused the stock gasket to let go?

 

[zachdeagle16]

My boost controller faild, I did a pull and my boost spiked to over 30 psi, and I heard a loud exlposion. The whole side of the h/g blew out on the #1 piston, and melted my timing belt cover.

 

[TurboDSM90]

you should pull the head, and make sure the surfaces on both the head and block are still ok. I hope your pistons and rods are fine also.

You cannot just throw in a cometic without prepping the surface in the proper way. Believe me I have already gone through what you are.

You are better off with just making sure everything is fine with the engine/surfaces, and throwing in an OEM mitsubishi headgasket. BTW use arps if you are not already.

 

[sleek98]

i would go with the titan ics sce gasket, i was going to go witht he cometic but i have heard problems with them if you dont deck the block. with this gasket it says no maching required. but im going to use the gasket remover pads to make the block smooth. and its supposed to hold 43 psi. they are 140 from ffwd connections.

chris

 

[98eclipseRS]

i would go with the titan ics sce gasket, i was going to go witht he cometic but i have heard problems with them if you dont deck the block. with this gasket it says no maching required. but im going to use the gasket remover pads to make the block smooth. and its supposed to hold 43 psi. they are 140 from ffwd connections.

chris

they are alot cheaper from summit

 

[sleek98]

yea but its thinner than stock from summit, and it wont shipp out for a couple weeks from them, i was within 1 day shiping from ffwd so i was willing to pay the extra for what i wanted and to get it now

 

[Precision]

i would go with the titan ics sce gasket, i was going to go witht he cometic but i have heard problems with them if you dont deck the block. with this gasket it says no maching required. but im going to use the gasket remover pads to make the block smooth. and its supposed to hold 43 psi. they are 140 from ffwd connections.

chris

Agreed, the titan ICS gasket from SCE is the best thing to happen to our cars scince Forced Performance and Crower. The gasket has a steel o-ring around the combustion chamber and neoprine (sp) seals around the water jackets to ensure no coolent leaks. This is deffinetly worth the 135 that jeg's is asking for it.

 

[Eclipseo]

About how long does it take to replace the head gasket on the 420a? I'm getting a compression of 185-30-65-190 1-4,plugs were normal and before my turbo kit was installed my comprssion was 180-190-180-205 and 2&4 had gas and oil soaking plugs. How will I know if its just the gasket and not the rings. The car smokes white which is coolant right, and thats after about 2 mins. of being on. Car has 118,610 miles turbo kit was on for about 2 miles. "help" I didn't want to post another ? about head gaskets, I hope this is fine.

 

[diambo4life]

<---- Runs a stock OEM gasket with no issues.

 

[dsm-onster]

Same here. I has a string of detonation and popped my stock HG. Puled my head and found that the head lifted and stretched the bigger 1Ga headbolts. This caused my headgasket to let go. You need to check your head bolt lengths at the very least.

Swapped in a new OEM HG and arp headstuds 90 bones from summit. Ran 28+ psi on my 18g without a problem.

 

[Mike 99GSX]

<---- Runs a stock OEM gasket with no issues.

Imagine that me too 650 at the wheels with a stock composite gasket. Maybe I'm missing the boat here with all these fancy things

 

[zachdeagle16]

The machine shop said that my head had to much surface taken off of it to rework it agian. I can't decide if I should use this head again and use a larger head gasket with it, or if i should try to find a different head.

 

[92awdgsx]

If the head is not flat, you will need another head. If it is flat, than reuse it.

 

[DSMcamaro]

If they make a thicker headgasket you could get still get the head resurfaced and use it. Assuming that valve to piston clearance is the problem. I havent searched so I don't know if they make a thicker gasket or not, but just from my small block chevy experience I know people have used them with little problems.

 

[sleek98]

im at the same problem as you, well i just had the last bit taken off. the problem is that there is only so much materal on the head surface that once you take it off then the coolant and oil jackets get messed up.

chris

 

[Precision]

It really is possible to take a lot of metal off of our heads, I have taken .075" off of one of my race heads and ran stock MLS head gaskets, with stock cams. But to be on the safe side you need to know how much was taken off the first time.

 

[zachdeagle16]

Can somebody please explain to me how to determine what thickness of head gasket I need. I cant find it anywhere. Thanks

 

[GVR4592]

It depends on what you are looking for. Most people just go with what is readily available. The Cometic is .051", the Mitsu MLS is .067, I believe stock is .042"(but I could be wrong), SCE make them a lot of different sizes.

On our cars, compression will lower roughly 1/10 of a point for every .010" increase in gasket thickness. So if you went with the Cometic, you compression would drop roughly to 7.7:1.