Hi guys. Well I got my new combination put together a couple of days ago.

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/showthread.php?t=850990

It fired up real smooth and sounded good. I have been working on fuel pressure and timing and noticed the exhaust sound getiing rougher ther more I drove it. I pulled the plugs to check them out and #7 was wet. It had a faint smell of gas. I thought maybe the injectors were too big. It acted like it was loading up like an old carbed car might do when the carb was too big. So I put the old injectors back in. Still no improvement. Noticed small white whisps of smoke coming from exhaust. I pulled the plugs again and getting engine war. #7 still wet. Checked oil level. Oil is a little cloudy and the level is higher than it should be. So I want to run a leak down test before pulling the heads. Note, I did not retorque the heads, never have had to in the past. I am figuring that is the reason the gasket failed this quickly. Do I need to replace them both or can I get away with retorquing the one that I don't think is blown? Also, when you retorque do you back them off and retorque in three steps again or do you back off and pull to final torque value one time or do you back off at all and just torque it tighter? Retorquing heads, what a pain! Thanks for all of your input.

 

First, if it's gas fowling the plugs and getting in the oil, I'd forget about a blown head gasket and look toward the intake gasket.Secondly, I've always retorqued the heads-quite a controversial subject, it's just what I was taught years ago-so I've always done it. Never had any failures with head gaskets I've installed. Just simply retorque-no backing off. If you do this I'm betting you'll find some that are less than what you originally torqued them to. Like I said-it' very controversial, and I'm sure some will chime in and say it's not needed. Just works for me.

 

What motor, are these torque to yeild? I have done a lot of turbo dodge headgaskets, these are torque to yeild no retorque necessary. When I did the head gaskets on my 71 K-5 no retorque was necessary. I am curious to see what everyone else says.

 

I dissagree about it being controveraial. In the olden days, retorquing was a fact of life. Most modern head gaskets are of the "no retorque necessary" type. 99.9% of the time these gaskets don't fail with a single, proper torquing. But I have never heard ANYONE say that a retorque was a BAD thing. It sounds like cases of, good old hot rodders overkill, and old habits die hard. And there is nothing wrong with either. Once too many, kills a little time. Once too few is a disaster.

RACE ON!!!

 

Thanks for the relpies guys. The faint smell of gas on the spark plug was just my predispostion toward and A/f mixture problem. I really wasn't looking for coolant at that time. I do agree with the intake gaskets if it turned out to be an A/F problem but this is not the case. I leaked it down last night and #7 was leakiing 80% and blowing air into the cooling system.

I wasn't getting any replies to this thread earlier so I restarted another thread with a more specific title. Sorry for the dupe. Here's the link ifyou want to follow the rest of the story. Thanks again. This forum's the best for getting help.

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/showthread.php?t=866860