High Compression ratio

[Alfa-Born]

Hello everyone, I was interested to know what kind of head gasket are you running on your 2.0L spider with high compression ration. I need a gasket for 11.4:1, I keep burning head gaskets.

Thanks

[genericwood]

I'll let others weigh in with the advantages of one brand over another. If everything else is right, I'm not convinced it matters what head gasket you are running. I currently have a Reinz in my race engine. Have you checked the head surface for straightness? Liner protrusion above the block? What do you torque the head to? Based on trusted advisors, I torque 2L heads to 70 pounds (oiled). Although I seem to have broken everything else at least once, I'm never had a head gasket failure (knock on wood).

Erik

[andyb6]

Mike and I also run Reinz in our 12.5:1 race 1750's torqued to 65ft/lbs cold (oiled). Most head gasket problems can be traced back to a non-flat head as Erik suggested, cylinder sleeves either not even with each other or not protruding a few thousands from the block, or the head itself not seating completely due to the alignment dowels/holes being bunged up.

Andy

[ECARRILLO]

Same head gasked - don't know about torques but the values mentioned seem in the range. Good luck.

[Reims]

Another consideration is regular re-torquing of the head. This is one of those things that you could bench-race and deliberate back and forth on (as to how many times a stud should be stressed, fatiguing of threads, etc), but I've tried both ways on cars that I've worked with, and in my experience the regular re-torquing method works well and has not caused any problems yet.

This is of course assuming that, as mentioned earlier, the sleeves are happy but not proud, the surfaces working well together, and the round holes have clean round pegs to fill them. Also, if all these things are true and you still have issues, you might consider O-ringing the block (liners in this case) and head.