Philip's D2 V8 has just started with head gasket failure, so he has immediately taken it off the road and stripped it down.

The failure for the second time is at the extreme ends of the heads where the fire ring and gasket have failed.

In both cases, the head bolts did not seem to us to be as tight as they should have been, despite being genuine LR bolts and Victor Reinz gaskets.

This time we will try going up a bit on the tightening sequence, and maybe do a check after a few thousand miles to see if the bolts have loosened off.

We did look at ARP studs but they are eye-wateringly expensive at £300 with carriage, $300 in the USA.

Peter

Just too little metal arround that waterway......

Mine go in exactly the same place, going Composit gaskets next

We are on composites now, mine went the same on ebay gaskets, but the Reinz have held up on mine since.

We'll clean those areas and try some RTV just around there when we assemble.

Peter

Shop around for decent gaskets!

Victor Reinz 02-35380-01 is the composite full top end set, including exhaust manifold and valley gaskets, 8-hole upper/lower gasket but not the throttle body or the two upper manifold rectangular gaskets. Loads of rubber seals and washers for the EFi engine that we wouldn't use.

We looked on the internet, max price we saw was £266 plus carriage, we paid £94.30 plus VAT collected from Bedford. I ordered a second spare kit to put on the shelf

Peter

Standard failure place for these this was mine


Are you following the final torque down sequence correctly ?

Yes, we are pretty religious about it on both cars, but they both went. Mine was a new short motor and skimmed heads, Philip's had the heads skimmed.

There is a lot of oil carbon on the back of the inlets, looks like the oil separator has gone awol, leading to excess oil mist coming up into the induction side.

Peter