I am racing a 90 civic, going down the straight and pop goes the radiator hose (blows off the radiator) recoverery tank detroyed. Find out head gasket let loose. Just rebuilt engine had head machined .006 and put on factory steel gasket. previous owner tole me he had problems also but machine shop pressure tested and said head was fine. Anyway put new fiber gasket on in 1 hr and finished race and raced next day. I am leary about racing again until I find out why head gaskets keep popping. ANY Thoughts???

 

get the block resurfaced next time as well as the head. if the block is warped it will blow gaskets constantly. also, look into some ARP headstuds. since they are studs, not bolts, theoretically, they can hold the head down better since they are holding it in compression rather than tension. think about it like this, if you are standing in a hallway, and you are holding a door closed, and someone is trying to open it, you can only hold with so much force. now, imagine you can reach across the hall and hold something on the other side with your other hand. you could hold way more that way.

 

Block was checked and had no warpage at all. ARP Studs is a VG idea. Can probably gain a few extra pounds of Torque with them also.

 

Did you reuse the stock head bolts? If you did that could be the problem. I belive after one use the Honda ones may stretch a bit

 

according to Kappa22, you dont use enough torque to permanently twist them. but if its a racing engine like it sounds like it is, then the superstrong ARPs would be better simply because hard use can actually stretch the stockers, even without torquing them.

 

One would not think that this bolt would stretch, especially with the 48# torque spec but anything is poosible. I have seen where some head bolts are a one time use only but according to honda these can be reused. On the other hand this is not a stock engine. Higher compression, higher RPM,s. Probably the ARP's is the way to go.