Anyone read my cylinder head ?

[mighty kitten]

Found a leak literally coming out of the head at the weekend and pulled it apart but can't see any det or deformation of the fire ring . Cleaned the head and marked roughly where the weep was . The marks around the fire ring look a bit darker but I'm stumped as it's on studs and the head was faced .

It's a Saab 234 and knock control is pretty good on the trionic system . The only change was fitting enem 268 cams but afr was still good .


It's been weeping for a little while but not enough to stain the block lower down where it's easier to see



Had plenty of failures on stretch bolts but usually obvious 50 p shaped gaskets , this one looks perfect ??

[mighty kitten]

Fire rings certainly look thinner on the inlet side

[mighty kitten]

You win and your prize is not having to waste any more of your valuable time on this thread , enjoy !

Thanks for that Dave , the above comment wasn't aimed at you . I thought the dull marks on the inlet side were odd il get the head checked

Edited by mighty kitten on Monday 7th July 21:39

[mighty kitten]

Head was flat but took it to a different place with a brand new machine and the machine finish looks a lot better than the last one



Must have been some det but the studs and forged pistons stopped the usual way the gasket lets go .

[mighty kitten]

Lasted another 1000miles of mainly track days before it started slowly pressurising the coolant . Stripped it and had the block checked .


Pretty obvious this time .
First pass on the block showed all the bolt holes slightly high and took 6thou to flatten .

[mighty kitten]

From what I can gather the surface finish is about right for a composite gasket . Had a spare block checked that hasn't seen any real boost and it was slightly out as well around the bolt holes . Probably not an issue at modest power levels .