UPDATE: Blown head gasket options

I see that there is a chip right at the edge of the combustion chamber. It looks like it was right under the compression ring in the head gasket. It is about .015 deep and extends on the surface of the head .085. I also noticed that one of the head bolts and both the surfaces of the valves in that chamber are all pitted like they were rusting for a long time. I think there is a good chance this chip was the cause of the problem. The head was new when I had the engine rebuilt so I never saw it before Saturday. I called Dave at VanNess Engineering, the guy who rebuilt the engine. He suggested either filling in the chip with Marinetek or having the head surfaced. He also said they now have fiber gaskets that don't have any metal in them. I have a race tomorrow and would like to get the engine running today or tomorrow. He said these metal gaskets should not do this and that either I had some electrolysis or it was this nick as he uses the same gasket in his boat and it has over 10 years on it without issues. So I will just use the gasket I have and assume it was either a defective head or some electrolysis. There is a ignition suppression capacitor there I will move in case that was the problem. Very well could be it as well. So now my goal is to find a machine shop that can surface the head today. Allen

UPDATE: After consultation with Dave at Van Ness Engineering, we agreed to ignore the chip and just put it back together. Blown head gasket on Saturday and racing on Tuesday. Not too bad and we won the race to boot. I still have water in my oil after the first oil change so I guess I didn't get it all out. It also took an hour to get it started. I think I got water in the carburetor (updraft) when we took the head off as water went everywhere and why not down an intake valve. Very difficult to troubleshoot and a long story by itself. I have ordered a new spare head gasket and apparently they now have ones with no metal in them so if this happens again I can replace the one I just put in with the non metal one. The best guess is that the radio interference capacitor I bolted to the block caused some electrolysis and that took out the gasket. Hard to believe as that cap was probably only there for 50 hours but I guess if you were doing some electroplating, 50 hours would seem like a long time. Also, I want to update the total time from rebuild to failure to 100 hours. My hour meter had 32 hours on it at the time of the rebuild. Allen . On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 6:34 AM, Allen Edwards <al… [at] gmail.com> wrote: > I see that there is a chip right at the edge of the combustion chamber. > It looks like it was right under the compression ring in the head gasket. > It is about .015 deep and extends on the surface of the head .085. I also > noticed that one of the head bolts and both the surfaces of the valves in > that chamber are all pitted like they were rusting for a long time. I > think there is a good chance this chip was the cause of the problem. The > head was new when I had the engine rebuilt so I never saw it before > Saturday. > > I called Dave at VanNess Engineering, the guy who rebuilt the engine. He > suggested either filling in the chip with Marinetek or having the head > surfaced. > > He also said they now have fiber gaskets that don't have any metal in > them. I have a race tomorrow and would like to get the engine running > today or tomorrow. He said these metal gaskets should not do this and that > either I had some electrolysis or it was this nick as he uses the same > gasket in his boat and it has over 10 years on it without issues. So I will > just use the gasket I have and assume it was either a defective head or > some electrolysis. There is a ignition suppression capacitor there I will > move in case that was the problem. Very well could be it as well. > > So now my goal is to find a machine shop that can surface the head today. > > Allen >