After putting together my engine with the new KC 482 pond block and my existing edelbrock heads, and on one of the first rides did I did see on several occasions cooling liquid oozing out from two head nuts. That was already worrying, but I didn’t do anything except retighten the head nuts, which did not move a bit.
At this point I would like to ask: to retorque the head bolts or nut do you have to loosen them up and tighten again?
Then a few months ago when I took the car out to break a speed record and hit 250km/h without problems I came back home and noticed white smoke out of one exhaust, blue smoke too.
I removed the heads and basically nothing was wrong, except the Felpro intake gasket not perfectly located where it should be and some deterioration of the head gasket around the water passage.
I did take the head to have the intake and cylinder surfaces shaved, the later needing 0.008" shaved off to remove the lowest spot.
To go safe I have decided to leave the Felpro intake gaskets hanging in my garage untouched, and have ordered from SCE their Titan copper gasket with water passage seals imbedded, and also their simple intake gasket.
I will get the parts sometime next week and will put all together again.
Since I mount Webers and there is always some gasoline dropping inside the intake, whichever silicone there is, like the beads around the intake and cooling ports on the Felpro gaskets just get softened up and out and I think that is the reason those intake gaskets end up leaking sooner or later.
I will stay away from the Felpro intake gasket. Too many problems related to that, at least in my case.
From SCE I also got the information that the ethyl glycol coolant normally used will eat at the silicone sealant and that it is advisable to use products like Redline or Evans instead to lenthen service life of the gasket with silicone beads.
As for the discolored pushrods I did not notice any discoloration when I used the center oiler block and the same edelbrock heads with the same restrictor in place and the same Dove rocker setup. I believe that since the sideoiler feed the crankshaft first, not so much
oil gets to the heads now and the restrictor might be not necessary but rather inadvisable. The head gasget has a smaller hole for the
oil passage and there is a restriction there anyway.
I will take the restrictors out and get more
oil to the heads.