Bugger...  Bugger !!!  



"Came too close to dying to stop living now!"

I feel your pain, I have also blown head gasket in cylinder 8. 

It was been great to watch the fight. Thanks.


Hyvinkää, FI

... unbelievable what these guys are doing with OLD IRON ...

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With Joe sharing pictures of his head gasket damage, I’ll share some of mine.  Here are a couple pictures of my left bank head gasket damage.  The right side looked similar.
 

 
I do question the fuel being 100 octane and if it was, then the MON value was very low.  I ran the 101 octane fuel that was supplied two years ago with the same compression ratio that Joe is running now without any gasket problems.  Beyond a simple specific gravity and ethanol content check, there not much else I can check on any given fuel without a full laboratory in which to check the BTU, MON, and RON values.

Lorena, Texas (South of Waco)

Ted, the gasket blew into the transfer passage for top end oil.  Did the pressure into the oil passages starve the lower end for oil?  I would think the combustion pressure in the oil system would evacuate all the oil.

John - "The Hoosier Hurricane"

John.  The three rods I’ve pulled from the engine showed no distress on the bearings.  I suspect any combustion pressure that was diverted back down the top end oil galleries was diffused at the cam bearing.  If I find any bearing damage, it will likely be concentrated on the #3 cam bearing.  Based on the amount of oil I found in those two cylinders, I doubt I’ll find an issue with the bearings.  If you look at the pictures closely, that’s oil that’s pooled on top of the #7 piston.  Once I pull the engine completely down, then I'll know the full extent of the damage.

Lorena, Texas (South of Waco)

I just dropped my oil pan, block girdle, and pulled 4 main caps, and two rod caps to look at the bearings.  I pulled #8 rod cap since it was the cylinder that blew the gasket, and #1 since it was at the opposite end of the engine.   They looked very good, so I am sorely tempted to reinstall everything with fresh head gaskets and fresh oil, and dyno it to see if everything is like it was before the competition.  If so, then it had to be the fuel.  Joe-JDC

JDC

great job everyone! ted, can you let us know how your engine would have fared if everything would have gone okay? thanks for all the hard work guys!

 lincoln/merc. y-blocks &mel's                                                               bucyrus, ohio.

Not Ted, but he was my partner in my build.  He did have a very strong engine that was capable of two 600+ numbers, both torque and horsepower.  When we were testing our engines, the 375 was slightly better score wise due to hp/ci, but Teds engine was definitely making more torque and more horsepower than mine.  I had eleven dyno pulls over 590hp, with several at 594/595, and the torque was over 560.  We can't give too many specifics about our builds since the EMC has rights to most of that information and pictures.   Joe-JDC

JDC