unused coolant ports blew headgasket

[shadowmoonwolf]

Well, I blew the head gasket on my '92 turbo and found coolant spewing out the back by the a/c compressor. Got a new gasket, torque wrench(for actually torquing it down properly this time instead of by feel!) and a manual boost controller so I don't blow it out again by hitting 22PSI since the connector broke on the wastegate line and is just disconnected now. I just pulled the head about a half hour ago and found the track marks where it blew out. I did some searching and can't really find any information on this, and I bought it from someone who obviously is not a mechanic but tried to rebuild the thing anyways. I won't bore you with the details, lets just say he was not very careful putting it together. I found that there are coolant ports around the intake side of the cylinders but the block and headgasket don't have ports at all in those locations, and thats where the track marks started from. So my question is, since this car is a '92(manufactured in ''91 so theoretically it's a 6-bolt) is this the 1g head on a 2g motor, a 2g head on a 1g motor, or does it not matter because it's supposed to not use those ports?

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Photo of coolant port on cylinder head

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The block it came installed on. Coolant port should have been at the upper right section of the cylinder.

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This is where the gasket blew out. You can see it's that same unused port.

 

[gofer]

Those ports aren't used on a 1g or 2g head they are just cast marks from the factory and it sucks to see that you blew the head gasket because of them. A good buddy and I visited BJ, an old motor builder for John Shepard, and he showed us on his head builds that he actually welds those unused coolant cast marks on the head closed and then resurfaces it making it smooth of course. That way you won't blow the head gasket from the pressure of the coolant pushing up on it since its a flat surface.

 

[shadowmoonwolf]

See that's what I suspected since I hadn't found anything mentioning it yet. Probably though it wasn't specifically them that caused it to fail, since it had a slow coolant leak, the wastgate actuator was disconnected(allowing it to sometimes kick in the fuel cut-off if I ramped on it on the highway but that only happened twice, it usually didn't go over 16 PSI) and 3 times when I was tinkering around inside while the engine was running, the throttle cable got wrapped around itself and overrevved the engine. Or the fact that I broke my last torque wrench and just tightened the head bolts by feel and probably didn't get them nearly tight enough could have done it. As far as the welding goes, I suppose I could try doing that(or have a shop do it, I only have a crappy MIG welder I bought from Orielley's and it's pretty cheap, not to mention I'm not experienced enough to trust myself to do it on an aluminum head) unless you think JB Weld(or maybe something more recommended) would be able to withstand the heat and pressure. Myself I would kinda be wary of it since if it didn't then that's another whole can of worms to mess with. If anyone has done it though and can vouch for it then next summer when I pull the head to do more work on it I'll see what I can do. I just put it back on with a cheap felpro gasket to last until then since I'm planning on having it apart anyways.