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Head gasket leak!

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Old Mar 11, 2017 | 03:30 PM
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Default Head gasket leak!

Last I upgraded my LS2 243 heads to some Mamo worked Trick Flow heads. At this time I used cometic head gaskets to bump my compression a bit. Well I smelled a faint odor of coolant, ggrrr! Looks like my dowel pin had something to do with the sealing issue. Luckily it was the passenger side so disassembly was quick. I ordered another head gasket yesterday but I'm going to get another set of dowels from the dealer just to cover my ***. Here are a few pictures.
Coolant was leaking on this bolt, you can see a slight orange tint to the allen head within the head stud.
Making progress.
Teaching my girl the correct way
Everything off.
Sit and wait.
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Old Mar 11, 2017 | 03:35 PM
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Copper spray coat the head gaskets this time around.

I've made a habit of using it on the last few builds and haven't had any issues.

Looks like a fair amount of carbon buildup on the pistons, how many miles so far since you put it back togther.
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Old Mar 11, 2017 | 03:43 PM
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Originally Posted by z06scentair
Copper spray coat the head gaskets this time around.

I've made a habit of using it on the last few builds and haven't had any issues.

Looks like a fair amount of carbon buildup on the pistons, how many miles so far since you put it back togther.
Hey z06, well to be honest I didn't completely clean the carbon off on my install (lazy). It's been a few thousand miles sense I did the head install. Yeah I'm going to spray the head gasket with copper spray I also ordered some new dowels as well.
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Old Mar 17, 2017 | 09:33 PM
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Finally got back around to putting it all back together. The dowels were definitely the problem. Next time I will install new dowels, lesson learned. I also sprayed the head gasket with copper spray as I used the same head gasket because it looked perfect. Here a couple of photos.

New dowels on the right if you couldn't tell.
Almost back together.
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