Well it lasted less than 10 minutes. I torqued the head to 42lb/ft, then 87 lb/ft, waited 24 hrs and retourqed to 87 lb/ft. I went for the first drive 2 days later (today) and I got to about half throttle up a hill and it blew. Was it my fault or was it a defective gasket? I pulled the valve cover and rechecked the torque, some had lowered to 40-50 lb/ft



-Dustin

 

Are they the right bolts, assuming yes but. Did you have the head resurfaced to check for cracks or warpage? And Honda headbolts are torque to yeild, you are only suppossed to use them once or they stretch a little, i have never had a problem, I keep using the same ones, but most everyone I talked to says its not good, but I have yet to have a problem.

 

you overtorqued the head bolts... first torque them to 22 ft/lbs then again to 49 ft/lbs and make sure to follow the correct tightening pattern

 

since your gonna do the headgasket job again just get some arp head studs. kind of expensive but theyll last you a while and make a better seal. also buy a better manual.

 

What happend when it blew? Im replacing my sisters HG right now and were going to have the head milled just a little bit to make sure that its not warrped (sp?). What causes initialaly to make HG blow in the first place?

Good Luck

Blaze

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by neutron89 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">you overtorqued the head bolts... first torque them to 22 ft/lbs then again to 49 ft/lbs and make sure to follow the correct tightening pattern</TD></TR></TABLE>



Also, to why head gaskets blow. It could be a lot of things. Too much compression for the headgasket, you may not have gotten a good seal when you put it back on, your head may be warped, or maybe it got too hot and just blew a hole in it. Kinda hard to do that though. But a friend of mine with a B18B blew his one day a couple days after racing, he was just driving it to work; not stressing it too much. I think in this case, you had the studs too tight, the gasket was smashed, the studs loosened up (didn't replace them? I've never heard about that either, I've always used the original studs over with no problems), and the gasket was in the same shape as when it was smashed, and there was a gap where coolant started spewing out, and tore up the gasket.

Its a really easy fix, but don't run it (if it does run) with the bad head gasket because you run a chance of cracking either the block or the head. Thats no fun. That B18B still runs, but not that well.