Well guys

I went to Calder Park today for a test and tune in the 1000 coupe and about 8 laps into a session, blew a freakin headie.

Not a big prob as we had the tools and and the know how so we contacted Truflow Performance Heads in Deer Park (top guys) and asked if they could do a surface grind which to my surprise he said bring it over and we will do it while you wait.. (5 mins $20)

Whilst this was happening i sent Cams old man to get a gasket.
Back in 45 mins with head and gasket.....back to the rebuild. Got the head back on , put in water......water pisses out the back of motor?????? Cams dad put the gasket in upsidedown .
This was after reasemling headers, carbs ect, so we though stuff it and took off all in one go, flipped gasket, torqed her up finshed her off. 3.5 hrs from start to finish. A couple of warm up laps at conservative rpm then stood on it and she went again.

Back on the trailer to fight again another day.

At least the other teams there were impressed with our commitment, and they gave us the comment you hate to hear "it was going hard up until then!"

Not a good Day!

Cheers

Stevo

Certainly sounds like you guys gave it some effort. How'd you keep blowing gaskets? Have you figured it out yet? Fuel not up to scratch? Maybe a little too much compression. Or do you need to start using a heavier duty gasket? Better luck next time.

Chris

Stevo,
Metal laminated gaskets are the go if you can find them. Use some 3 Bond jointing paste and they are fully re-useable.

What times were you getting till the leak???

Thanks Errol

I'll look into it a bit further and take a bit more time. I think that the gasket going in upside down the first time and the not so clean environment was the cause of the second failure. Rest assured we will be spending a lot more time and being alot more careful with the next attempt.

Times were in the 1.10-1.11 but the timer was playing up so we may have missed a couple.

What would you set the valve clearances at by the way??

Cheers

Stevo

Does anyone know much about graphite Head Gaskets, good, bad or otherwise

Cheers

Stevo

Clearances depend on your cam ramps but most coomon is 0.014" hot on both IN & EX
1:10's arent bad, Thats about what i hope the sunny will do with some good rubber.

sounds like a fun day was had by all.but seriously.i wa spreparing the sunny for a supersprint at wakefield park about 2 weeks ago,after replacing the dud radiator,& when i undid the sump plug,about a litre of coolant preceded the oil out into the bucket.lots of rude words,one blown headgasket.it was blown on all 4 cylinders,was probably weak already & the overheating was the last straw.so,off with the head,new gasket,(no we didn't skim it,lazy us),new gasket on,all of a sudden it's sounding really strong again.on the day we suffered from fuel surge in the tank,manifold studs loosening off due to a lack of lockite,but overwise the car went like a shot dog.the worst part was i wasn't driving,i was doing the timing in the tower for the event,i let a friend who'ed done a lot of work on the car use it,along with my usual co-entrant.oh well,oran park grand prix on the 25th.

Ummm....did you mention it was me driving at the time when the head gasket let go Stevo I thought you said it was OK to rev it to 9500 rpm
Seriously though, I wished we had have video recorded when it was on the Track with the Konica Cup V8, ok, it wound you in pretty quickly as it came up over Mt Jane, but it didn't drive away as quickly as I would have thought under dunlop and into the first turn and front straight.
No doubt I'll be involved in the new head gasket re-build (I suppose that's the least I could do )
Errol, can you get hold of those super dooper head gaskets?

Cam

Cam,
The gaskets are best sourced from Nissan Sport US as detailed below!

"$75.41 NISMO head gaskets are available in two styles for the A-series engine. The composition type gasket has a bore diameter of 79mm and compressed thickness of 0.8mm (OE - 1.2mm). The multi layer metal head gasket has a bore diameter of 80mm and a compressed thickness of 0.6mm."

not a bad avatar there cam. do you think you could give mine a bit a a tweak it is fairly crap. And yes you will be involved (heavilly) in repairing the headie 'you' peeled.


Strange ins't it I have done 60plus laps with no dramas'......you did 5!!!!!!!

Cheers

Stevo