blew head gasket with o-rings

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fluty118

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Sep 10, 2008
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last spring i had enterprise mill and o-ring my head, i installed the head with 12mm arp studs that enterprise told me to torque to 145lbs i used a .090 thick gasket. 5000 miles later i blew another head gasket, my boost was at around 55lbs when i blew, thats with a 66mm charger. i now got the head off and pulled the wire out its .045 thick wire the grove is also .045 wide im not sure how deep it is because my caliper wont fit into the grove. i did not measure pertrusion dumb mistake. but im woundering why i would have blow it i know there is no for sure answer but i though i took all the correct steps to try and pervent this. the gasket blew on the coolant passage on the right front of the block on the block side and between cylinders 1 and 2 also on the right side. do you guys have any ideas enterprise did all the machine work i believe that was my first mistake
 
Re-torques, did you do any??? if so, what was the interval and how many did you do?
 
i started the truck and it sat at idle untill thermostat open shut truck off and let cool over night and retoqured next morning and that was it. i had asked enterprise and they said i would not need to retorque them.
 
block is straight check with machinest straight edge

as far as enterprise ha when dave was doing all the work they where great once they have been hiring new help the machining guy they have or had was terrible. latly i have not heard anything good bout them they are pretty shady. for instance my buddy bought a truck from them and supposly had a fully built tranny flex plate everything even showed him the reciepts for all the parts. he shattered the flex plate,we pulled tranny and the flex plate was stock not aftermarket like they sayed
 
i would try a few more heat cycles before a re-tq. like a dozen or so and re do it after a few dozen more
 
so should i put new wire in and new studs and put it back together or do i need to go a different route
 
Enterprise did a small goof with me...but corrected it! When they machined the O-ring grooves...the head was not lined up properly and the O-ring was to close to the water jacket. I did all the re-torques several times and tried different gaskets. It started leaking as soon as the pressure built up in the water jacket! They machined a new head for me and shipped it to me within a week and all was good! I have only re-torqued this one once since I installed it 12,000 miles ago!

You might want to check the cylinder walls for a crack and also make sure your dowels are installed correctly!
 
now that you pulled the wire out I would use new wire.

I wouldn't see why you would need a new set of studs.

When you get the wire back in check your protrusion to make sure its up to spec.
 
Do a few retorques. Heat it up do one hot and babby it for 500 miles do it again and do it again after another 1000 or so and check them every so often. The arps seem to need to be torqued alot
 
fluty118 said:
i started the truck and it sat at idle untill thermostat open shut truck off and let cool over night and retoqured next morning and that was it. i had asked enterprise and they said i would not need to retorque them.
Click to expand...

I would say that you did not have enough retorques.
 
They are correct about not enough retorques expecially with large wire. I always heat the rig up and let the thermostant cycle a few times. I shut it down and pull on all the studs hot. I dont loosen them just pull them down to your spec. Use cummins sequence on the first time and finalize your torque with a line torque sequence (s-patten). Works for me. Good luck!
 
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