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TR2/3/3A Advice for which head gasket material is best

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Joel Lester

Joel Lester

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My engine is at the machine shop and got a call from the machinist today once he had a chance to measure and evaluate everything. Overall everything looks good. Yay! I've got a set of the 89mm piston and liner set. The liners are "spot on" for their height above the block as long as I use the steel figure of 8 gaskets (I dropped off new copper ones too but he says they're too thick so according to him I'll stick with the steel ones).
He asked me about what type of head gasket I was planning to use - I told him that I've only heard about the copper ones. He said he didn't like copper head gaskets as much because you are having to keep re-torqueing the heads. I jumped on the internet and I soon realized there are a number of choices! Copper, steel and premium composite. You guys have any advice or input into this decision? I'm planning to be a weekend cruiser and have a new "road cam" from Newman cams so don't think I'll be needing to raise compression or doing any racing.

What's your head gasket of choice?

Joel
 
Copper should do it and easily trimmed for 89mm.
But if your engine builder doesn’t like them just go premium composite. Or what he recommends.
ive just taken delivery of a fast road engine and I went with all recommendations for their usual build. If you dictate changes to this and something goes wrong ( your part or unassociated ) there is an excuse literally built in.

you are investing a lot of money in your project don’t skimp on something that (hopefully) you will never see again.
H
 
Great! I got a call this morning that my engine is ready to be picked up! Super excited. I'm going to run this composite gasket idea passed him to see what he thinks. Also seems to be pretty standard item and a straightforward part. I hope I can tell which side goes "up" - perhaps it's labeled??

Thanks,

Joel
 
I used copper, but again doing what they suggest is probably best. I am not sure about a bunch of re- torqueing. I usually re-torque one time and it seemed tight anyway, so not sure if the torqueing is basically just checking to see if the head loosened. Heck 100lb is a lot.

I am putting a zinc additive this time because I had a cam lob failure using the old cam. What a nightmare, it took me months chasing a miss to figure out I had a cam failure.

steve
 
Here's something I found on the internet but have not done. Small dia. copper wire soldered to the head gasket. Comments ?
 

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Thanks guys,

I picked up the engine parts from the machine shop. They did a wonderful job and I'm excited to get going. When I mentioned the composite head gasket idea the two machinists I talked to agreed that would be the way to go - the words that stood out in my mind were "much more forgiving". So that's the plan for now.

Cheers!

Joel
 
I went Lucas composite 5 years ago when my left rear head stud failed. Went with all new ARP head studs, re-torqued twice and never looked back.

When doing the original torque, I did it in incremental phases at 25, 50, 75 and finally 105 lbs-ft with a 24 hour period between each

Bob
PS: my motor has 87mm pistons
 
Concur of the ARP head studs, I used the same and I should have mentioned it. The small (relative) extra cost is well worth the piece of mind.
 
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