Yeah :-)

My car has had this funky intermitant overheating problem for about six months. I didn't want to admit that it might have been the HG, so i did everything i could to try to fix it without replacing the HG. Well, nothing helped, and the car finally started to burn coolant and just didn't have that pin-you-in-the-seat pull anymore. Still balls out fast, but if i beat on it, it'd overheat almost instantly. Kinda funny, because in the six months i fought this problem, i made a few drag passes (13.95@105.5), incessantly abused the car, raped an SRT4, and generally flogged it like a donkey. Always ran fine.

I finally decided that the HG was blown. I didn't even bother to do a compression test, i just got a new gasket and proceeded to tear into it. Well, after getting the head off (and almost passing out several times from the sheer heat of the day - 105*!) we found that i had blown my HG in FOUR PLACES! I blew a huge spot (probably 20* of the circle) from cylinder 1 towards the front coolant passages, blew Cyl 1 into Cyl 2, blew 2 into 3, and was probably a few third gear pulls from blowing 4 into the front waterjacket as well. Pretty f'n nasty.

Just flat out amazing that it's probably been that way for half a year and ran fine up until i took the head off. No coolant in the oil, no oil in the coolant. Just a little steam under boost, and a little less "pep" combined with an intermittant overheating problem. Wow.

Cars always run there best right before they blow :P Sounds like you should be a little quicker at track with the new HG :thumbsup

wow that is pretty amazing how it ran with the HG like that. Now you should see low 13s at least. good job dino!

wow man! You have any idea as to what contributed to blowing this gasket? If i remember right, i think you had lots of torque on the head studs(90 ft lbs?), so thats strange that it would blow like that. I had called ARP and talked with them directly about the right amount of torque for the studs, and they kept telling me that the recomended 65 ft lbs is what is normal for a alum cyl head. The def said not to torque them over that for some reason? So far mine's been ok and i torqed to 70 ft lbs, since they say to retorqe the studs after several heat cycles, so i figured they will be pretty close to 65 if no retorquing.. But anyway, get er back together and beat it up some more!

Well, i really think that it was because i tuned the car on the dyno with a hole in my FMIC, a few exhaust leaks, and a misadjusted throttle. Aftr i fixed all those, it didn't occur to me that the car was probably lean right when it hit max boost, because it was hitting it a lot sooner than i'd tuned for. I think honestly i just ran it a tad lean, knocked, and lifted the head up. Eh, shit happens. At least i blew it good..

Was this w/ a MLS headgasket???