hooch blew a head gasket

[joedrum]

pics

you can see right about around the 6 Oclock position that cylinder pressure was pushing into water jacket ...maybe other places too

same here it seems for sure

now at 12 Oclock and more

you can also see at 40plus pounds of torque there no compression on the gasket but milling marks ..maybe you can see them if you inlarge the pics ...with the way thing are i cant see anyway to get torque on the cylinders with the bolts being on the outside ridge of the water jackets ..its rather easy for me to see that an o ring that raises things up 1/1000 or more is the only way one can put enough pressure on the cylinder sleeves ...cooper is just a race tool and suited best for air cooled bikes ..the pics dont really show much of anything on the sleeves at all ..where the most pressure is and the furthest thing from the bolts ..

 

[canuckxxxx]

I think I see what you are saying Joe...if the HG was being compressed enough around the top of the cylinders it would have a mark or ridge that you could feel where the water jacket starts. But yours doesn't.

I think it is because you have way more HG surface area to compress than typical air cooled application of copper HG. Here is a shot of a copper HG for a 650 BSA. You can see how narrow it is compared to the GW gasket. The one used on my old Royal Enfield was just a flat ring about 1/4" wide.

image

• canuckxxxx
• Apr 9, 2017

 

[canuckxxxx]

And looking at the GW HGs the bolt holes are a long ways away from the cylinder and separated by a water jacket. In comparison the BSA bolt holes are very close to the edge of the cylinder.

I think goo gaskets are your friend here.

 

[joedrum]

yep me too brian.... i have to say oldwings need goo gaskets

 

[Ansimp]

Just don't put it on too thick otherwise you won't get a compression seal for the cylinders. :doh:

 

[ekvh]

Here is a pic of mine after a few hundred, maybe a thousand miles. You can sure see the permatex aviation sealant stayed put. How many thousandths thick did you go with? Anything experienced eyes notice?

 

[dan filipi]

Eric, do you feel a ridge from compression of the copper? If so, is that ridge less between the cylinders or anywhere in particular?

 

[joedrum]

what you think this is a game eric ...experience eyes ...if you have something to contribute do so ...it would have been nice to say your gasket was leaking oil pages ago ..not page 10...and now there something else you want experienced eyes to find ...sheesh ...areyou having fun or something...i dont get that kind of help at all ...sheesh

about the only thing to me that could be done ...would be swagging the inside edge of the copper cylinder bore ...or blunting it ..so it fatter ...i use to do this on saw blade teeth so when i sharpen them they would cut fatter than the thickness of the blade and the blade would run free and not heat up as much cutting faster and last longer ...this would be very hard to do evenly ...but if you could do this and create a fatter edge than the rest of the copper and maybe provide a better seal at the sleeve ...this would protrude top and bottom ...copper being so soft this might blunt nicely ....seems you would have to have a bullet shaped deal of steel that progressively gets bigger and work the gasket all the way around on one side and then the other by fliping it ..this would create a nice rolled or swaged edge and would be on top and bottom and might seal great ...copper is soft and this edge would crush down with torque id say ...but of course having some like this to work with is not here me to use ...sheesh have the right top and bottom jig you could anneal the gasket edge as you went ..as the solid steel could suck the heat out of the copper if you heated it on the go swagging as you do it ...sheesh i wish i had the proper anvil cone and top ring persuader to evenly perform this task ...seems like it would be as good as oringing or better ....

 

[ekvh]

Dan, I never checked it. I think it was. I annealed it when it was new and before reinstalling. I hope to pulling one head and replacing it this week if I can find a machine shop not too busy. It needs to match the other side which was shaved 0.025". I will look more closely at it and take some pics. The current right head was cracked at the small bolt boss/ear. The one I installed in its place drips oil at high rpm only. While it's off I need to check the bottom on the block for flatness. First one broke, this one leaks. I'm thinking I'm a few thousands low right at the bottom. If I am right, it will be slow time with sandpaper and glass. I'm not too keen on the file idea and don't have one that I know is flat.
A lot of the machine shops here give me a month as a wait time with no guarantee.

Joe, ten pages ago it wasn't leaking. I just got home a week ago and started riding my bike and I am not positive it is as I can't really hang down there and watch it at high rpm. All I can do is wipe it off and see where it seems fresh. It does look like it's from the bottom of the head, but it could be from a crack in the head. If I cracked another head in the same spot, I must have a different issue. I can't see it with the header on there. The bike is on the lift and as soon as a shop says they'll do it, it's getting done. I thought it was a shifter seal or valve cover gasket. I have only enough experience as any newbie. I've been working on my Wings for maybe ten years. I worked two summers in a marina in high school. Never took any shop classes except drafting. This hasn't been something I've done my whole life just recently. So I put it out there. Sorry if I offended you, but not sure how. I was just trying to help. Someone asked me to post more, but who am I to post this stuff? I've never done this. I count on advice from people here and other forums. I thought that's what forums are for. With your pics and others opinions, I thought it appropriate to toss the little bit I have out there. Part of the reason is the different appearance of the sealant. These pics were from a year ago, and the heads were off for a different reason, a very stupid one. They weren't leaking. The heads were making a clicking sound, I figured I had gone too thin and must have kissed a piston or bent a valve. Turns out a bolt on a front pulley was loose. I probably forgot to tighten it.

 

[dan filipi]

I like that idea of rolling the copper edge to create a compression ring. How could that be done by hand?

 

[AApple]

Here's my take on why these copper gaskets are not sealing well....take my opinion for what it is...an opinion.
The reason a flat copper(or any other material) gasket will not seal properly is that there is no compression ring on them. On these Oldwing engines, there is NO solid block/deck. The cylinder liners are free-standing...they are not part of the block(engine casing). We have coolant passages circling the cylinders. The ONLY way(imho) that a flat, solid gasket is going to seal on this engine design is if the cylinder liner sticks up PAST the top of the engine casing....just a couple thou would prolly do it. You have to have some way to compress the gasket around the top of the cylinder liner. If the surface of the engine casing and the cylinder liners is completely flat, there's no way a solid gasket has a chance to compress around the cylinder liners, and therefore seal them. Now, annealing the copper gaskets to "soften" them might help, but in my mind, I just don't see how it will help enough to completely seal them permanently in use, considering the cylinder pressures, and heat involved. IF these engines had a completely flat, unbroken surface, as most automotive(and other) engines have, then a solid copper gasket would work....and do work. Early Chevy V8 engines used steel shim head gaskets. Some engine builders still use them on certain applications, where a small, external coolant leak isn't an issue(think race engines). Even those race type engines do have a small groove cut into the head or block for thin stainless steel rings around the cylinders.

The reason a "normal", composition gasket works is because it does have a compression ring made on to them around the cylinder bore. That ring will compress as the head is torqued down, sealing the cylinder. It's also the reason re-using a head gasket is not a good idea, since the gasket has already been compressed.....it will not compress any more without more torque....which can pull threads out of the engine casing....which leads to leaks.

So....in MY opinion, the only way to make a solid gaskets seal on these engines would be to machine/file/sand on the casing itself, but not on the cylinder liners. I don't know if it is even possible to do that by hand with a file/sandpaper and be certain that everything is perfectly flat.
Call them goo gaskets, or whatever, but they are designed by folks that are a lot smarter than most of us wrench turners, and they designed them like that for a reason. Just because we have a hard time finding quality gaskets for these old turds doesn't mean the actual design is ineffective.....just the manufacturing process used these days. I'd bet if someone could find a stash of OE, NOS gaskets from back in the day, they would work just fine.

Again, all of this is just my opinion. I'm not a bike technician(but I play one on TV).
I'll be tearing back into my '81 here before long to replace the dang head gaskets on it, too...again. I'll be stuck with using the same composition gaskets most everyone else has to use, but that's all I got to work with. :yes:

 

[joedrum]

im inclind to agree totally with you joel ive seen it first hand LOL.....

 

[Ansimp]

Subaru ej25s have had head gasket problems for awhile which is extremely frustrating as the compression aspect is perfect but you get oil leaking from the underside return. You can actually see the gaskets starting to delaminate after 8-10 years and 200K kilometres. Genuine gaskets are pretty expensive here in Oz and my mates Subaru workshop ( Subi Teck) sees many early failures with aftermarket gaskets. They only use genuine Subaru head gaskets for reliability and order about 60 at a time from a US dealership to keep the cost down. I hope this sheds some light on the Goldwing head gasket potential quality issues.

 

[AApple]

Iirc, Scoobydoo engine have a similar free standing cylinder liner/open deck design, no?

 

[ekvh]

AApple, your post would be a good reason to use the 0.004" compression rings. Too bad their $80 and I'm not sure what happens as far as re-using the gasket. As to blunting the copper, I'm afraid that would throw your torque settings off in other areas, but I'm no authority. Copper gets used in lots of diesel applications. For copper to work, the two surfaces have to be flat., one source said within 0.002" another said 0.004". Neither source said whether that was combined, both head and block. Finding a true straight edge with only 0.002" is hard enough. When I did mine I had it to where 0.004" wouldn't fit under my straight edge. I moved the edge around a lot. I did have a larger gap right where the small bolt goes at the bottom of the block which I tried reducing., I will try to glass the upper part of the block to get it closer. It takes a while using sandpaper and glass. I don't have a lot of room for error. My other head will be done today, I hope, so I plan to tear it down. Maybe I'll find something that can't be seen with the headers on there, but my gut is telling me I have to get the block flatter.

 

[joedrum]

well as ive stated my heads are flat block too ..totally flat ...peopl want to poo poo my hand work and call that the reason and i can tell you that aint it on hooch ...there an art to using files and other hand tools ...id say my biggest mistake was going .042 thick on the copper gaskets ..it seems this made the copper way to stout ...40 - 50 lbs of torque will not do anything to this much to compress it ....biggest reason i went this thick is 1200 pistons top out over the top of the sleeves ...but im sure i could have wen to .020 on the gaskets on hind sight ...this might have made all the difference in the world ....well i cant get there from here ..so the deal is a failure as it is...a gasket has to conform to the amount torque that can be used and the numbers here are way off and no sealant will hold long in these conditions

 

[Rednaxs60]

Joe - using hand tools effectively is an art and you appear to have that down pat. When I first joined my Navy as a stoker, was taught how to use hand tools. Had to make a V-Black and clamp using hacksaw, files, rulers and the likes. The instructors used a flat bed with a dial indicator to mark. Clearances were in the range of +/- 0.000" and such. Needed this skill set on the old steam propulsion ships. Couldn't take the lathe, or whatever into the spaces to tweak parts to fit. I apparently passed the course because I made the Navy a 25 year career as a marine engineer.

I use hand tools all the time to do work. My friends want to use power tools when it's sometimes faster and better to use a hand tool. Items last longer, not as much material removed at one time. Their preference.

On a more modern note, I keep getting told to stop leaving my cell phone at home because my partner has wanted to get a hold of me when I'm out. If it's important, I will hear about it when I get back. There was something to be said for the old days, but only for certain things.

Good luck on the build, frustrating I know. Keep using hand tools, older bikes need older skill sets. Enjoying the thread, not the head/heart ache.

Cheers

 

[joedrum]

well as i have nothing to loose i avvealed the gaskets ...they do get softer and its bring ou another thing too ..the copper is not really a very flat surface ...as it blackens the surface ...so when using scotch brite to clean them up it was very easy to see how uneven the surface is ...at the moment im machining the copper flat with scotchbrite ...i didnt expect this and coulbe huge in why things didnt work

 

[Ansimp]

Don't worry about flattening the copper Joe as it will now conform to shape when you torque the heads down. You don't want to give away any copper as this is your new sealing surface. I agree that the tolerances need to be finer as you reduce the head gasket thickness and compressibility.

 

[slabghost]

With a little luck it will be all sealed up tomorrow.