Breaking in an engine on a stand vs in-car

[vtwinsideways]

How do you torque the heads at 55 pounds/feet on the water outlet connections without snapping the dog ears while you are doing the rotation? Ease off on those two?

I've broken more than one over the years. Just curious what you guys do.

Clean, clean and clean. As was said earlier, make sure your mating surfaces are flat and if you are going to use a gasket make sure it is uniform. In my opinion, if you use a gasket, don't use sealer and if you use a sealer, don't use a gasket. Either way is fine,but adding the variables involved in the two has cost me 2 necks. Make sure everything is super clean especially those pesky spots right in around the studs. If there is the least speck of dirt anywhere, you could get uneven loads that result in a break. Also, tighten all head studs the same, this includes the water neck. Better to have a broken water neck every once in a while than a cracked head on the hiway. Luke

 

[Tom Wesenberg]

Jeff in Illinois,

I torque the two front head studs and the manifold at 50 lbs., and the rest of the head studs at 55lbs. Guess I've been lucky, havn't broke a water outlet casting in many years.

Ron

I guess you've also been lucky on the mainifolds. I've seen a few broken at 30 to 35 ft lbs. of torque. I just installed a set of manifolds today, but have no idea what torque I used, because I would never use a torque wrench on them. Actually, if I had to guess, I'd bet they are 20 to 25 ft lbs.

 

[Ron in Quincy]

Tom,

Based on torque I read here on the barn for manifolds, the last time I torqued the manifold on the new tourning engine in my 30 Coupe I went 30 lbs; after about a month of driving it blew out the gasket at number 4 exhaust; when I replaced the gasket I went back to my usual 50 lbs, retorqued after the engine was run about 20 minutes; have had no more problems and have put about 2000 miles on the engine. I always make sure the intake and exhaust manifolds are flat and have machined if necessary. Maybe I was just unlucky ?

Ron

 

[allen]

I always test motors so many things could happen sure is easy to fix it before installation