Blown Head Gasket Symptoms!

[gabit]

I think the most common early head gasket problem is from the combustion chamber to a water passage. Think of it this way, the combustion pressures are far greater and hotter than either the oil/water pressures/temps while the engine is running...remove the radiator cap while the car is running, and see if there are any bubbles in the coolant... if "yes" ,increase the rpm, and see if they get worse...if you don't have water in the oil, you can probably seal it with any of the "solutions" they sell for fixing this type of gasket failure before the combustion gasses erode the gasket to an oil passage.

[luggage]

Looking for confirmation: I'm fixing a non-turbo and don't plan to do any major performance modifications (if any) to it. Is a non-metal head gasket sufficient (Felpro)? Are bolts sufficient? I'm assuming it had bolts from the factory and they will be fine if torqued properly. I mean new bolts, not the originals.

Now that I think about it: One of the reasons I want bolts is so I don't have to take the engine out. Wouldn't I just be able to insert studs into the top with the head in place to prevent having to remove the engine?

I see tons of posts about metal head gaskets but none about plain replacement gaskets.

[rnoswal]

Plain gaskets work fine on an N/A engine. I put one on my daughters car along with ARP head studs and I think it will last a very long time. When you put the head back on after putting studs in, just leave the last 2 studs out like I did and you can tilt the head up from the front and get it to clear the firewall. Then just put the last two studs back in the torque it down.

You just want to make sur the studs go all the way into the block, which I noticed from my last car, that they didn't go all the way. They bottomed out but there were still a few threads left. You have to do it the one way because of the allen hole at one end of the studs. But it is working and my daughter ahs been driving it around for quite a while now.

Russ

[luggage]

Thanks.

From what I have read, I do bottom out the studs (but don't put too much torque on them). Is this right?

Also, I can only find head studs for the 7M-GTE. I know the engines are mostly the same but I don't know if there are head differences that would make these not work. Do the 7M-GTE head studs work in an NA?