Well after being boosted for 48K Miles of constant beatage with 8PSI on Emanage then on Kpro & ARP headstuds the Headgasket finally went.

Coolant system goes under crazy pressure when I'm driving causing coolant to blow out of the coolant overflow resevoir. Yeah this happened to me before and it was a bad headgasket. I guess not bad for lasting 48K miles.

So yeah I could replace the HG myself for 35$ plus 70$ to re-surface the head and labor myself.

Or I could spend 350$ on another engine thats VTEC (since mine is non-vtec) and get that little extra HP lower mileage then build the motor thats in my car and make it mint as a backup.

What would you do?

(i mean if the head is warped i just wasted cash on that and will still have to pull engine)

 

..

 

Its your money lol I don't know what you want people to say?

Run the Vtec motor it will give you a little extra. and a great chance to build your old up and then it will be bad-***.

are you using an OEM gasket? and when you shave are you getting the copper spacer to allow back to the specs? just curious.

 

I was going to use the OEM headgasket, If i get the head resurfaced I can't use the OEM headgasket your saying?


Depends if I get extra cash, if i do i'll get the motor, if not i'll swap the HG and leave it alone and hope for the best.

 

The hg is obviously cheaper, and you would get a little bit from the vtec motor, but i have had bad experiences with the a2 (i thinks thats what the 02 vtec engines are). My friend had a turbo specialties kit on his car, a conservative tune at 7 or 8 psi, he went through 5 engines before selling the car, head gaskets, spun bearings, bent rods (might have been hydrolocked) and a few others.

If you get your head resurfaced you don't have to use a thicker gasket if you don't want to, just realize that it will up your compression a bit.

 

you do realize that after you shave it twice the clearance between the valve and the piston are a little close?

its just a copper insert that brings the thickness up, you still use the hg

 

unless the head was wildly warped or the machinist was a mouth breather, ideally it should have only been milled 5 thou each time, if not a little less. 10 thou won't do anything to anything, no need to worry.

 

There will be no problems with P2V if he gets .010 shaved (extreme case) there is still plenty of room. its not like he is running high dome pistons, over sized valves, and a high lift cam. at most this brings his comp up .1 or .2 but he is still in no danger of p2v.

I have not see a copper spacer used with boost, I feel like it is probably not a good idea.

 

Whoa whoa.. first off.... has it been overheating? Or just pushing coolant? Coolant push is just from the boost and a bad HG seal. Overheating, you need to resurface the head. I replaced two headgaskets on motors that had coolant push and neither needed to be decked. Just check it with a metal straight edge, chances are it's just fine.

 

exactly So how can you comment on this thread?

And since the OP didn't say that the head was warped to sh'it i will assume it was is that a problem? No Of course not, but trying to prove somebody wrong who has used these copper gaskets after having heads shaved and not having a problem with them it was only a suggestion.

 

im just saying i haven't seen it used before, and it doesn't seem like a good idea to me, even though they in fact probably work just fine, but my question is why suggest a copper spacer when decking the head (even though decking might not be necessary in this case) if the slight bump in compression would be OK (or if not use a thicker HG), either way there would not be a chance of p2v contact.

to the OP, take the head to reids automotive or Manchester engine rebuilders, they can check the flatness of the head for free/10 bux and if it needs it take of a few thou. I would then recommend an oem HG and see how it goes. also if you have a decent straight edge, check to make sure the block is flat, and that the sleeves arnt moving around.

 

I Don't care if you have seen it used before or not. Nor do i care that you think its a good idea. Its a clearance issue thats all im saying. i'd rather spend that little extra money on the spacer than to bounce the valves off the pistons and have a cluster **** occur.

 

are you speaking from experience that the typical mild head milling performed twice on that head will bring the valves anywhere close to the pistons? someone look up the service limits on that head as i don't have easy access to that, but i would be willing to bet money that ~10 thou would not even be close to the service limits. i've yet to come across a honda head, period, that would fall under such tolerances.

 

I think I have that manual on my computer at home, Ill check on it tonight

 

Maximum resurface limit is .2mm (.008 inches)

If the warpage is between .002 and .008, it can be resurfaced. If it's less than .002 it doesn't need to be resurfaced.

 

nah, it's ok, it wasn't me got it. thanks.

well, i didn't express myself properly at all. i didn't mean from an OE perspective even though i did say service limits, i was thinking more along the lines of a practical perspective, but yeah - i see why the limits would be such. to honda, anything past 8 thou would change the compression too much to be acceptable for their OE intentions. that .008 limit isn't because of potential interference. we've all seen people go 15 all the way up to 30 thousandths on all types of honda heads. on my old y8 i had a stage 3 crower cam, p29 domed pistons and from what i can recall 10 thousandths off the head. eventually i went with a thicker HG because the compression was too high, but i never had any piston to valve issues before that with a mongo cam and big dome on top of the milling.