Cylinder head glue-down

[Mitchell Andrus]

A friend's son had finally had it with a leaking cylinder head gasket. So instead of sending the head out for surfacing, he epoxied the gasket to get a better seal.

I wished him luck and walked away. I guess you don't learn not to do that on the Wii, huh?

[David G Baker]

I have had fair luck with high quality gaskets and the copper goop added (been so long I can't remember the name) but there is nothing that replaces getting a warped head shaved/resurfaced and torking the head correctly. It is much easier and more sensible to take care of the problem once the head is off the block.

[Chuck Wintle]

A friend's son had finally had it with a leaking cylinder head gasket. So instead of sending the head out for surfacing, he epoxied the gasket to get a better seal.

I wished him luck and walked away. I guess you don't learn not to do that on the Wii, huh?
What kind of motor was it...auto, motorcycle?

[Mitchell Andrus]

10 yo Toyota. Hope it seals and he doesn't need to remove it.

[Lee Schierer]

I had a similar experience when my son was in college. A school van needed jump started so the band could get home. I offered to help. The kids had located a set of jumpers, but weren't sure how to connect them. I connected the cables to the battery in the dead car and was making the connections in the running car when the young man who owned the cables jumped in and claimed I was doing it wrong. He insisted that you had to connect negative in the running car to positive in the dead car. I warned him this would not work, but he insisted that since they were his cables and he had signed out the van that he make the final connections. He connected them as he wanted and sure enough the smoke got let out of the voltage regulator just before the fusible link went. He was quite surprised to say the least. I bit my tongue and just walked away rather than saying I told you so...and went to my car leaving the young man with the dead van to find his own way home.

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

ahhh....he epoxied it "in situ"....I thought he actually went through all of the trouble to remove it and then just epoxied it instead of getting it resurfaced.

not sure how well that's going to work, but more power to him.

[David G Baker]

Lee,
You are lucky that the smoke wasn't coming from under your hood. I don't jump anyone, I use my cell phone and call them a tow.
On the epoxy, I wonder about how well epoxy copes with the high temperatures that exist on engine heads?

[Karl Brogger]

Most epoxies break down with heat. Some more tolerable than others, so it depends on what he used. How hot does a head get? coolant temps can hit 250*F pretty easily, EGT's in my pickup never get over 1250*F. I'd have to assume that temps of 300-400 aren't out of the question under normal operation.

[Pat Germain]

So, did multiple head gaskets fail? If not, resurfacing may not have been necessary. It may have just had a faulty gasket from the factory. I always use Fel-Pro gaskets. Those guys are good at figuring out ways to improve on the factory gaskets. I had to replace the head gasket on my daughter's Honda. It's a good car, but that model was notorious for failing factory head gaskets.

The copper spray stuff is called "Copper Coat" and it's made by Permatex. There's a spray can version that's great for all-metal head gaskets. It's also a good anti-siezing agent for things like exhaust manifold/header bolts.

[David G Baker]

Thanks Pat. I haven't worked on car engines since I couldn't sit under the hood any longer. I do have an old 1965 John Deere row crop tractor that is going to need some serious engine work before too long so I may have to hone up some of my old skills if I can bring them back.
I always used the metal gaskets and Copper Coat when doing a rebuild. I also loved hot tanking any engine that I removed, sure cleaned up the job.

[Pat Germain]

I also loved hot tanking any engine that I removed, sure cleaned up the job.

Oh yeah! Sure beats the coin car wash method.

[Michael Gibbons]

In high school, I worked at my friends family's machine shop. They were working on some foreign engine that used a type of wool thread in a groove around each cylinder- no gasket. No leaks-so anything is possible.

[Paul Ryan]

If you are going to fix it do it right. I cant understand the thinking behind save a few bucks now. It'll just cost you more in the long run. I once had a guy who was going to replace his head gasket with about 3 tubes of silcon. I tried to advise him, but he would have nothing about it. So I sold the silicon to him and out the door he went. Never saw him again after that.

[Pat Germain]

If you are going to fix it do it right. I cant understand the thinking behind save a few bucks now. It'll just cost you more in the long run. I once had a guy who was going to replace his head gasket with about 3 tubes of silcon. I tried to advise him, but he would have nothing about it. So I sold the silicon to him and out the door he went. Never saw him again after that.

I am also suprised by people doing something they know is wrong trying to save a few bucks on their vehicle. For example:

- Leaving the car up on jacks or blocks instead of jack stands
- "Rebuilding" an engine by simply installing new bearings and rings. This is always followed by, "I don't understand why I can't get no oil pressure".
- Installing flexible tubing with coat hangers for an "exhaust system". This can be deadly!
- Driving with no exhaust system (again, deadly)
- Removing ball joints and tie rod ends with large hammers instead of presses/splitters
- Removing a defective thermostat and not replacing it
- Driving around for months on "doughnut" spare tires
- Driving around on bald tires
- Ignoring gasoline leaks under the hood
- Driving without an air cleaner

If doing such things doesn't kill them, it often ends up costing them more money in the long run. I would assume professional mechanics like such people. It's good for their business.

[Robert Maloney]

The bad things about epoxies and silicones to repair bad head gaskets is that they can actually cog the coolant ports, and ultimately cost you a motor. If it is a Toyota pickup with a V6 Toyota was actually replacing them as goodwill. They had problems with many of their gaskets from the early to late 90's. If you went through all the trouble to pull the head an extra $75 to $100 is far cheaper than breaking down and having to do the entire job over again

[Sonny Edmonds]

I wish him luck, too.
Just another prime example of how bad the brains are getting now days. :rolleyes:

[Alan Trout]

Mitchell, I owned a automotive machine shop for 10 years before selling it. I too wish him luck. If it is a standard epoxy it will break down. Believe it or not I have seen this tried before. The other side of the story is even if it was machined depending on how warped the head is there could still be troubles. If it is an overhead cam engine the warp can be great enough to cause the camshaft bearing journals to bind in the head and smoke the bearing surface of the head. Of course this is not a replaceable bearing surface. Typically if a head is over about 10 thousandths warped the head should be straitened and then surfaced. In severe circumstances the head may need to be aline bored so the cam does not bind. Unfortunately there are plenty of machine shops out there that will just surface the head even if there can be more issues.

Far as gaskets go, manufactures have spent 10's of millions of dollars on development of gasket coatings for head gaskets. Don't ever, ever put anything on a head gasket unless there are instructions to do so. You are just asking for trouble. I know I have seen this literally hundreds of times.

Wishing your son luck

Alan

[Paul Atkins]

I guess sometimes just getting that extra 500 mile out of the ol' clunker seems worth it. I remember having a water (no coolant in this) leak on my model A head and decided that it needed to be 'shaved'. Not having any idea how this was done, I held it up to my 10" disc sander and ground away till there was no more rust around the water hole. I'd bet that it was pretty far from flat. Lots of copper sealant and extra torque kept it from drooling. i wonder if the guy who got it ever saw how that precision machining was done.

[David G Baker]

I don't recall if it was a Model A or Model T that my Dad had when he was a kid. He told me that he had used his belt as main or rod bearings. He told me that he would tear the engine down almost every week and jury rig something in order to keep it on the road. Ah, the good old days. :D