Re: head gasket leak - any luck with liquid sealer


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Posted by David Sherman on Thursday, November 03, 2005 at 11:04AM :

In Reply to: head gasket leak - any luck with liquid sealer posted by Garrett Mayer on Thursday, November 03, 2005 at 10:02AM :

I have had good luck with Bars Leak on my 7U D4 Cat that had a small leak where the pony motor bolts on, and I've used about 1 bottle every 5 years in my 67 Chevy pickup that has a crack in the water jacket of the 292. I've been putting Bars Leak in it for 25 years and it's done the job. I doubt it would work at all for any leak between the water jacket and cylinders, thought it might work for a while on a leak from the water jacket to an oil passage or to outside the block.

On a 251, it's so easy to pull the head, that I would just pull it, try to see where it was leaking, and look for any hairline crack, scratch, or warpage in that area. You might want to have a machinist check the head with a good straightedge. Also, make sure all your head bolt holes are clean and the bolts screw in easily by hand, before you put the head back on. You might have "torqued" it to spec, but one or more bolts was bound up on dirt in the hole. Blow them out with air, or if you don't have air, run a tap with grease on it down the holes and back out to collect any crud, cleaning the dirty grease off after each hole. Lastly, I have had good luck with permatex spray-on copper gasket sealer on all the head gaskets I've replaced. Some say never to use sealer on head gaskets, but that stuff has worked well for me.

Basically, I use Bars Leak for leaks that are hard to fix and aren't exposed to any serious pressure or movement. It's intended as a field expedient, but if it only takes a bottle every 5 years to avoid a complicated and expensive repair, it's worth it. None of that applies to your head gasket leak, though, so my advice is take the head off, try to find the problem, get a new gasket, put some head gasket sealer on it, and try again.



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