Hi guys, first thread I'm posting & I dont want to waste anyones time. Any help & advice would be really appreciated.

So I have a 97 spec SIR b18c , a while ago I bent two exhuast valves from a glorious money shift ..or should I say money shift's due to bad shifter bushings anyway. I ended up rebuilding my cylinder head & took it to a local shop "cascar" up in sacramento . They did a very good job , my mistake was being a first timer re-installing the cylinder head over the fresh arp head studs & cometic head gasket , i ended up scorching the cylinder head mating surface to the block .

It didn't seem to bad , I was so over it at that point I wanted my car done . I put everything in order the way it should have been , timing was done good , valve lash ..etc after everything for a while I been tracking a leak that is between head & block on the passenger side it drips down to the b18c stamping & onto the bell housing of the transmission.

I replaced distributor seal, vtec solenoid seals , everything possible on that side that can cause the leak , i situated . Still leaking & I remembered about the scorching on the aluminum surface and its gotta be that . I guess its deep enough cause it leaks here & there depending of the temperature of the engine ..now I wanna know what should I do ...I'm tight on $$ but I wanna do this the right way .

I was told "Blue devil" to use that from someone, but I dont trust it.

Lesson learned at the end of the day I should have not put the head on and took it to the shop and gotten it re-surfaced even though it was fresh surfaced head, all cause of my brother being finicky and moving the head while trying to help install it 😭

Will I have to redo everything all over again ?

i was thinking of using rtv ultra grey along the side where its leaking so it doesnt drive me nuts . I apologize for the long thread, I had to explain my self .

I just want some good advice cause there's people here that built plenty of these engines , that achieved my dreams . I did all the research and looking up I can , I just want other people's opinions to steer me into the right directions cause I'm losing my patience with a car I just want to do things to and enjoy, thank you ,any response, I'd be much appreciated!

 

The only right way is to pull the head and deck it to remove the mark and redo the head gasket.

The other options are bad ideas because you aren’t fixing the leak.

 

I doubt its the head gasket! check the oil check the coolant and do a compression and leak down test see whats going on in the engine. That leak that you explain is very common where people think its the head gasket when in fact its not and oil is leaking from somewhere above. I sugest really looking over things in the distributor area and check for leaks, The Vtec solenoid, the copper Allen bolt on the side of the head, the valve cover, the cam cap, even oil leaking from the cam seals can make its way there so keep looking for the leak.

 

Clean up the oil and pin point the leak. Go from there.