Headgasket tricks

Spray both sides with high-temp Aluminum paint and assemble while still tacky.

Hi as said above I Spray both sides with high-temp Aluminum paint and assemble while still tacky.Then Proper Torque Sequence As Well As Several Retorques After Running Engine does a great job . I also want to say some thing about getting the head trued up while you have it off it makes a big difference and on a 308/262/232 I always use new grade 8 bolts 3" x 7/16 or 3' x 1/2 with extra thick washers and on the earlyer splasner engines and on the 8 cyl's I like to remove the studs and use new bolts there also it makes a big difference when you take the head off the next time

The water soaking expands the gasket allowing more crush when the head is torqued. I helps the gasket conform to any inperfections in the head or block.

I have used this method several times with good reslults. Make sure the head has been resurfaced, and it's clean.

As much as I believe Bill and wanted to give the Armor-all a try, I chickened out

and went with the permatex copper spray (Sorry Bill). I played hell getting the

Clifford head off, double nutting the studs and they all came out reasonably except

for the very center stud. Took me a week of dinkin around with that one stud and when

I finally did get it to budge the head was coming up with it. Man was that aluminum

corroded around the stud. Head and stud came off together then I used an impact gun

and a drift to get the stud out. Cleaned the deck,chased the threads and drilled out

all the gunk in all the water passages on the block. The head was a little more work,

the reason for pulling the head(besides the blown gasket) was a crack on the top of

the head in between #5 and #6 that had been previously repaired with a mig. That

didn't hold and by the looks of the inside of the head they had tried every stop-leak

known to man. Didn't seal the crack but managed to plug all the smaller water

passages in the head. Drilled those out and taped off the thermostat and temp sender

holes with a foil duct tape. Picked up a couple gallons of rustaid at the hardware

(normally used in these parts to clean rust stains from irragation off of your house)

Filled the head and let it soak for a couple hrs.,then taped off all the water passages

and flipped it over and filled it up and let it soak again. By this time the inside looked like a brand new casting. Bead blasted the outside and took it to a welding buddies.

He chucked it in a mill and milled out the previous repair and all the spider cracks

radiating out from it. Tigged it all back in and made it look easy. Off to the machinists

buddies place to surface it and the head surface cleaned up very quickly with less

than an .010 cut. New set of ARP studs permatexed into the block,copper sprayed

gasket,the head back on,and washers and nuts w/moly thread lube. Pulled it down

in 4 or 5 steps to(can't remember,90 or 100 ft. lbs.?) Macgyvered a garden hose

and pressure regulator to the water pump and piece of pvc to the top hose to get

rid of whatever crap I could get out of the block. Sure didn't want to run it through

my freshly rodded out radiator. Retorqued 2 or 3 times cold,plumbed the radiator

back up and have almost 500 miles on it now,and it works great. Just couldn't

bring myself to armor-all it after spending almost $500 on studs,gasket,acid,paint,

radiator repair,etc.etc. Not for fear of the cylinders not sealing just worried about

water migrating from all those small passages.

Main thing if using aluminium paint is timing - if you let it set hard it goes rock-hard, and you will be in more trouble than if you fitted the gasket dry. Let it get touch-dry and then fit.

Geoff.

It's interesting that almost all the comments here have focused on what to coat the gasket with. Of course that's what the original question was about, but the objective of it all is to get a good seal and avoid a blowout or the more common seepage. In the Jack Clifford tech sessions that I attended, and in his publications, he emphasized the torquing operation more than the coating on the gasket. The crucual area where he differed with the factory instructions was in re-torquing the head nuts or bolts several times over a period of weeks, always with the engine cold (yes, for both cast iron and aluminum heads). His contention was that after the typically specified torquing operations, the gasket is not yet full compressed, so there's some more "relaxation" and the resulting lessening of the pressure on the gasket. I went through two or three gaskets on my Hornet before trying his technique, but have had no problems after I used it.

I to have been using High-Temp Alum. Paint for many years,and used it on my Turbo-charged 308 And a Super-Charged 308 with no gasket failures.

Randy Maas,could you give us your tried and true exp.on head gaskets ?

With the Drag Hudson. Hudsonly Rudy.