Might be a dumb question but... I just bought back my old 97, the guy who had it just replaced the head gasket less than 300 miles before i got it. The trucks been doing great since I got it back. I've only put about 100 easy miles on it myself, I popped the hood this morning after getting home from work just to look around and noticed the dang head leaking again. I'm going to try to just do a re-torque of the head bolts before I get too pissed about it, but I was wondering should I just re-torque them to specs or should I try to torque them slightly higher? Any advice is very appriciated!

 

130-150. Make sure there not streched. If money is not tight I would go ahead and stud it.

 

make sure to do it all in a few steps not all at once ... make sure that way their all getting the same pull .... but yeah I agree... studs are best

 

Thanks for the advice. I know head studs would be whats best for the truck, but unfortunately it wouldn't be whats best for the bank account right now. I just need to try and get this old girl running back down the road again safely as soon as possible.

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ok I have another quick question, if i were able to get a set of studs, since the gasket is pretty much brand new, could i simply remove one head bolt at a time and simply replace it with a stud? or would i have to pull the head again?

 

I hear ya on the bank account, but if your gonna do studs man id deff. Go with a marine gasket imo

 

If you are going to go through with studs as a means of fixing a recurring head gasket problem, I'd have the head zero decked as well. A warped head will cause you problems studs or not; you need a good flat mating surface to get the most out of it. Yes, more downtime and more money... If you do have it decked, then you'll likely want to grab a thicker gasket to make the difference, so the "marine" gasket would be a decent bet.

Search some more retorquing sequences if you would like to try stock for the moment. It may not be professional advised, but some people pull out the bolts one at a time to oil the threads and shoulders before retorquing in order to eliminate some friction and get more tightening without just twisting. There is also a specific torque sequence for the head to minimize warping and cracking potential (more or less spiraling from center bolt to outside), there should be schematics on here or just Google images. For the overachiever, there is a degree method of tightening the bolts too (better indication of torquing versus twisting), but I'm not familiar enough with it to explain...

Good luck!

 

The marine HG is thicker + will alter your compression a bit .... use a factory HG and studs ... no reason to go with a thicker HG unless you have an actual reason , the Marine has no real benefit other than its thickness .... its thicker to provide the injector more downward angle in the tips ... which produces more heat and hence needs to have more room for combustion ... that's my understanding anyways .... Check out NWbombers.com .... you can get a ton of info there on all these questions and there are guys who are actual "Engineers" and they know how to modify and not just toss it together if you know what I mean , no offence to anyone in particular here or the such ...

 

Well I talked to the guy that did the head gasket job today, and he told me that he took the head into the machine shop to get decked and the shop after looking over the head told him it was pointless. The head was only off by less than .01mm and that they wouldn't be able to get it much closer than that. So the guy bought just a regular Victor Reinz head gasket. The schematic he used to judge the head bolts showed that he still had a 1/4in of stretch left in the original bolts. So he saved some money and just reused them. He torqued them exactly to the factory specs and in the correct sequence. The leak I have is so small, and I noticed it only seeps when I'm pushing over 35lbs of boost. So think weekend I think I'm just going to try to re-torque them maybe slightly over factory specs and see what that does. The only mods I have done to the truck is just a 100 fuel plate, I have the afc "smoke" screw slightly turned in and I have the pump turned up a little bit. I'm not pulling a whole lot of boost on average, and the truck is just a daily driver/farm truck. I really think that might work, what do you think? Thanks everybody for all the advice!

 

Ouch i hate even the thought of head gasket problems.

 

Bull. The head is to be surfaced when doing the job. There's much more than "straightness" when considering the sealing surface. Fix it right or don't fix it at all.

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