was helping out an older frind of mine puttig an alternator on his 82 6in lifted short cab short bed immaculate sr5 truck. stiitng on 35 mud kings with a built LCE motor.

so you know how you have to drop the coolant to remove the alternator?.. well you guessed it.. got a little to ancous to test drive it and pulled out of the shop and went on my test drive without putting any coolant back in.... (everyone makes mistakes....) noticed tad bit above normal and thought nothing of it... went on with test drive and started hearing a weird sound only under a load, looked at the temp guage and it had just hit the top... and then it hit me, i said ohhh to myself and shut the truck off instantly. waited 30-45 mins and began to slowly put some water back into the motor.. got the system burped and drove home cautiously... noticed it wasent running as good on the way home too... it hasent been running perfect anyways because the webber he has on it sucks to much fuel for the stock fuel pump...

but anyways, do i have any option to save the LCE head, like IF i can have the warpage milled out are their thicker headgaskets availible so i dont have too high of compression??

thank for any insight!

 

Tell your friend first and admit your mistake...and go from there.

Perhaps give LCE a call and see what they say, it's their motor/head.

I hate "DOH!" moments...as they can be expensive.

Good luck.

 

lol ...Dam! I guess it depends on how warped it is, Ive done some stupid too .\\

,but not that bad .

 

I would imagine that if the head was torqued to specification and tightened in the right order, it wouldn't be likely to warp.

 

i already told him.. he knows ill take full responsibility for my actions...

no idea about the thicker head gaskets tho?

thanks!

 

not a thicker headgasket , but a copper spacer is avaliable .... I believe engnebuilder sells them ? but not sure .

 

nice, ill have to look into this.. if anyone has anymore info on this feel free to chime in.

thanks!

 

Head warping is what causes the gasket to blow when over heated like this has been. It can be torqued right every time but it's torqued to an iron block. Iron and aluminum expand at different rates.

 

Run a compression check on the engine and see what that reveals. Does it get water in the oil or vice versa? Take the radiator cap off and crank the motor. Look to see if you get bubbles (like compression getting into the radiator) when you rev it up. Sometimes you can get lucky by just replacing the gasket............sometimes not.

Good Luck, cause the Bad Luck really sucks at times.

 

you're gonna have to pull the head and put a straight edge on it - that way you'll know if it's warped and by how much. If it's only one or two thou, then you should be able to have it machined without that much increase in compression. worst case the compression goes up a bit, if the carb is already running rich, that'll keep cylinder temps down a bit and help battle detonation/pre-ignition anyway.

either way, pull the head off first and find out what you're dealing with