Posted by chriscase on Saturday, May 21, 2005 at 5:06PM :
In Reply to: Starter breakage AGAIN!?!?!?!?! posted by Dylan on Saturday, May 21, 2005 at 2:31PM :
A cylinder head full of water has tremendous force against turning, enough to collapse conecting rods on a V8 when 2 cyls fire against one wet one. Are you running a pressurised cooling system? Did each nose cone break after a hot shut down, or long parking period? The high compression in the water-filled cylinder can cause one hell of a kick back if the charge fires- it only takes a couple a table spoon of water to take a 6:1 engine into the diesel range of 25:1. Just fill the combustion chamber 3/4 of the way. These flat heads are SOOO BAD at headgaskets, between the structurally thin head and the siamesed cylinders, you ought to check yours out.
They test head gaskets with a smog meter in the radiator. I wonder if the combustible gas detector I bought surplus would work? They are cheap on ebay. The auto parts stores sell a kit of a dye and a squeeze bulb pump for checking, it has a stopper and sucks the air from the radiator through the dye, which changes color if fumes are present.
Hows that for advise, opinions, and suggestions? Aspirations thrown in free!