Head gasket: Fel-pro a dud? Anything better?

[squidtone]

I know this has been flogged to death on many other boards, but I have to ask it here. What head gasket would be best for a non-rebuild, non-ideal surface finishes on head and engine deck?
I put together my L134 a few years ago when I replaced the head. I used a Felpro gasket with one side metal and the other fiber. I also used Permatex copper coat.
The engine probably has 1.5 hours run time on it since that time. Over this past summer I noticed some white fog emitting from the tail pipe, and it lost it's smoothness. I drained the oil last week and got about a pint of coolant out of the oil pan.
Yesterday, I checked the torque value of all the head nuts, and they all were in the 70 ft lb range. I then took a half hour to pop the head off. The head just lifted off, it was not sticky or stuck on. The gasket is VERY stuck to the head. It will take time to peel and scrape it off.
I see no cracks at all on deck or cylinder walls, or head combustion chambers. Deck of block looks real good with a straight edge. Can't check head until I get that pesky old gasket off.
I can't see signs of where it leaked. Plugs are all just a bit sooty, but I never really ran the Jeep for more than a tenth of a mile at putt putt engine speeds.
Not sure if I should find a fiber both sides gasket, or go for a full copper clad unit from Walcks....Which gasket would you use assuming my head checks out ok for flatness?

[scoutpilot]

Copper. Nuff said.

[squidtone]

I've done some investigation into my head gasket fit. First of all I could not see signs of where the leak is. I'm not too surprised as the engine really has low low hours, perhaps even minutes of run time, so seeing signs of corrosion or leakage may not present themselves.
On the other hand, I did see something that bugs me. The witness mark of the compression "ring" from the gasket on cylinder 4 looks like it was not sealing. If you look at the first picture, you can see that the compression ring barely was clamped as indicated by the screwdriver. I'd estimate it was less than 0.025". I looked at the gasket in that spot and noted that the compression ring width is also thin at this region.
In addition, what little "ring" exists, hangs out into the cylinder area; the majority of it is not compressed between the head and block. It hangs out by about 0.050".
I have the same Felpro gasket 7285B new and it's thin in the very same spot, and it hangs out into the chamber too. Is it worn out tooling at Felpro? I think that ring width should be wider like it is on the rest of the cylinders, and it should not hang into the chamber. By the way, the other cylinders sealing rings all look much better, and left much wider witness marks on the cylinder head indicating they had good wide squish area.

[squidtone]

I was thinking of tweaking the new gasket in the region indicated to shift it over by 0.030 or so to get rid of the overhang. It would move that portion closer to cylinder 3 which can afford to give up a little bit of it's sealing ring on that side.
I'd have to shave the hole in the gasket so the head stud wouldn't force it back.
Not sure it's possible....if the metal shim part of the gasket wrinkles that would probably ruin it. I'll experiment with the old gasket.

As a side note, it appears all local autoparts places carry only Felpro...is the Victor Reinz gasket no longer made?

I will also probably buy the copper gasket from Walcks. I'm interested to see how the compression ring on that one fits around each chamber.

[scoutpilot]

How much money have you put into this motor? Please. Don�t try �tweaking� the head gasket. You�ll be sorry you did.

[athawk11]

I use the Felpro and have had success with them.  I do coat them with copper spray.
 
I had a spare on the shelf and compared it to yours.  On mine, the band on the top side in the mirror position on the #1 cylinder looked a little thinner than the #4 position.  Not sure this makes any difference, but thought I would share.

In your photo, it does not look like the remnant of the gasket was leaking in this area.  Are you sure the fluid in the oil is coolant?  When I don't run my Willys for a few months, condensation does build up in the oil galley and does take lots of driving with a hot engine to burn it completely off...and I live in a very dry climate.  Just wondering out loud I guess.

[squidtone]

Thanks Scoutpilot and athawk11,
I do appreciate all feedback! I'm definitely a little over the top when it comes to being a "yankee" and over-analyzing. But I'm an engineer, and if I can improve things by "tweaking" stuff, or re-purposing, I'm all for it.
This engine is a 200 dollar never-been-rebuilt-standard-bore plant, but with an industrial head/fel-pro gasket/permatex copper spray combo that seems to have leaked. The "water" in the pan is bright green coolant and I believe it is a gasket failure, so I'm totally for any and all experimenting with gaskets.
I did perform my "gasket bumping" on an old gasket, and it worked very well....and I think I may shift the whole gasket toward cylinder one also...by notching each stud hole a little bit.
Additionally, I ordered a copper-clad gasket from Walcks and it's actually coming tomorrow (nice to live close to Pennsylvania) so I'll test fit that, and if it looks good, I'll go with that one.
I called a local machine shop to machine the head but I think they're closed this week.
I'll update with what I do!

[athawk11]

This is an industrial head?  That actually changes the conversation a bit.  I've read a couple forums that describe a difference in the combustion chamber when comparing industrial heads to standard CJ heads.  I believe there is a different head seal for the industrial head.  Industrial heads supposedly have larger combustion chambers...as there is less need for high compression.  I could also be mistaking this with older Americar heads.

I'll bet Carl Walck can confirm this over a short phone call.

[athawk11]

I can't currently measure these heads, but I thought I'd post them so you can try to visually compare them to yours.� The first one is a GPW head.� The second is a 2A head.� It may be angles or illusions, but it looks like there is more "meat" between the chamber and the stud hole on these heads when comparing them to the spot your screw driver is pointing at.

[squidtone]

Tim, Thanks for the pix.
Attached is a pic of what an industrial head looks like. The shape around the valves is very similar except for depth (as far as I can measure) to a Go Devil head I have on hand (it's no good...cracked). The gasket fit is less than optimum on the Go Devil too. I guess I'm being the Don Quixote for L134 gaskets.
I will be realistic that the market for Go Devil parts is a super small so what's out there is all there is, and after all, my engine combo is a "Jeep salad" so to speak. I'll just try my best to make this stuff work.

[squidtone]

I thought I'd share a surprising finding regarding the industrial head vs. the standard Go Devil head.
I cc'd each head, and I found that the Industrial head combustion chamber cc'd to 87.5 cc's.
The Go Devil cc'd at 91 cc's.
This was for #4 on both heads. I did the measurement twice on each to be sure.

Calculating the compression ratio assuming a 0.070" thick head gasket, zero deck pistons and ignoring the volume taken by the valves sticking up above the deck of the block, this calculates to:

6.68 to 1 with the Industrial head, and

6.48 to 1 with the Go Devil head.

So, despite the Industrial head having a 0.065" dish around the complete circumference of the cylinder (the Go Devil has no dish around the cylinder bore), I can see that the "bowl" of the Industrial head ramps at a much shallower angle to the spark plug zone compared to the Go Devil ramp in the "bowl".

But getting back to the gasket situation, I received the "copper" gasket from Walck's today. I was pleased to see that it is made by Best Gasket, which I believe to be a good company. I've used some of their stuff in the past.
The copper gasket is two sheets of 0.010" copper sheet sandwiching a graphite center. One copper sheet wraps around the other around each cylinder opening to serve as the compression sealing rings.
As for the fit, it does have a wider opening for each chamber compared to the Fel-pro gasket.  In the picture below, where the machinist rule is, comparing the width of the chamber opening for the Best Gasket and Fel-pro, the Best Gasket is wider by almost 0.060" at that point. (Which means the gasket is further away from the edges of the cylinder and combustion chamber.) This is what I wanted.

Best Gasket recommends Permatex Copper Spray on the gasket, so that's what I will do. Not sure when I'll put it back together as it's below 10 deg F out there for a few days even at the height of the day. Too cold to paint heads or mess with copper spray!
I'll update again....

[1955CJ-5]

That is interesting....

I suppose like most when I saw the picture of the industrial head I guessed it would be lower compression due to the cutout above the piston....

For what it's worth the Model A guy's all recommend "Best" brand gaskets.......

Randy

[aboyandhisdog]

How does a guy know if a head is industrial or a go devil?  Are they marked as such?

[athawk11]

Hi Dave,
Here is one of those conversations that stuck in my head.� I think you'll find it interesting.� It's one of the reasons I've never spent the big bucks on a SuperSonic head.� �[smiley=wink.gif]

https://www.thecj2apage.com/forums/going-supersonic-texas-version_topic27294.html

[squidtone]

Tom,
In my experience, Industrial heads have a huge, cast in, capital letter "INDUSTRIAL" where the Go Devil head says "Willys". Sometimes there will be a "Willys" right above the "INDUSTRIAL".

Tim,
WOW, someone has done all this work before! Haha! And they put nice pictures in there too! In my searching, I never came across that thread. Thanks for the link. I can confirm the Go Devil head and Industrial head do both measure the SAME in overall thickness, so it's not simply that the Industrial was milled less to have that "dish" over the cylinder. And of course the Industrial shape is different enough to have less CC's despite that dish.

But in the end what it comes down to for me is I just want my engine to not seep coolant into the oil pan. I think this Best Gasket copper gasket will work for me. I'm cleaning the block deck surface today. I may spray my copper coat in the garage if I can warm it up enough.
It's been frustrating this week...I have the week off but the temps have been fiercely cold and not conducive to Willys work.