Topic: Engine Building Question
This is not for a Lemons car.
I had to pull the engine out of my track beater last night. After the overheat (burst heater hose) at Road Atlanta, which was the second time that I've overheated it, I could get a .025" feeler under the straight edge on both the head and the block, so it's done. I tried putting a head gasket on it, but my oil quickly turned milky as my coolant level dropped, so I'm thinking that no amount or over-torqued head studs and copper spray is going to put Humpty back together again.
Engine is a Honda/Acura B-series.
Ring seal is still great and bores/skirts look good (it's only got a few thousand miles on it), but at some point in this engine's life (back in my drag racing days, boost!) it was decked several too many times, so piston-to-deck height is around -.027 (yes, that's a negative number). I compensated for this by using a .060 head gasket, which was probably a bit much, but I wanted to be really sure and it's my track beater, so I don't care so much about power as long as it runs.
It's also a Dart block, so I'm reluctant to part with it, as it is a really good block and I paid a lot for it.
So my first question is, can I just keep track of which piston went in which hole, have the head and block resurfaced, and slap it all back together with a new head gasket and a set of main/rod bearings and have a reasonable hope of still having good ring seal? Or should I get it bored/honed and put a new set of pistons/rings in it?
And my second question is, should I be worried about that 4-layer .060" head gasket? I've had several people tell me that they are failure=prone, but those have all been people who run 15:1 compression or 25+ PSI of boost. This is an 8.4:1 engine that I'm running NA on stock cams.
If that makes sense to anyone, then I'd enjoy hearing from you.
Thanks
Roger