My cracked head, see lower post *pictures*

[sctty1986]

another thing u can do to check if its a blown head gasket is, take one plug wire off at a time and if two side by side dont fire right on they blew a bridge. if your head has a burnt valve it could be doing all of the above symptoms of skipping on acceleration and popping no matter how much gas u give it, at idle sounds like a dead miss. i had a burnt exhaust valve in my old 305 after installing an old junkyard carb that was dirty and wasnt sending fule to one bank of cylinders, overrevved pumped up the lifters and burnt the valve, so i had a set of ported polished set of 267 heads laying around put them on and it ran fine. a lil bit of spark knock from so much compression but it was fine once the timing got folled with and the idle air bleeds were set.

 

[350kmileford]

Well the engine finally died on me on the freeway today. Gonna pull the head shortly and look for problems.

Edit* Yep, the head is cracked in multiple places, inside the # 3/4 exhaust port. There may also be a crack on the top side of the head, by the head bolt above # 3/4 exhaust. Looks like I may have had exhaust gas getting into the intake.
Will post pictures later tonight.

 

[350kmileford]

http://i32.tinypic.com/1y3cbt.jpg
http://i32.tinypic.com/2w65lwp.jpg
http://i30.tinypic.com/2nsz2ua.jpg
http://i27.tinypic.com/a1ahc.jpg
http://i25.tinypic.com/dy7q88.jpg
http://i28.tinypic.com/14tufbb.jpg
http://i31.tinypic.com/egy4x3.jpg
http://i29.tinypic.com/58j13.jpg
http://i27.tinypic.com/2d1a9s4.jpg
http://i32.tinypic.com/73ktih.jpg
http://i26.tinypic.com/2ywiuyb.jpg
http://i27.tinypic.com/dq3sja.jpg
http://i29.tinypic.com/30hvthi.jpg
http://i31.tinypic.com/15d2alj.jpg

Though I feel stupid asking, should I risk putting on a new head without getting this block at least milled? Note that the car never did get abnormally hot from the issues.

 

[JackFish]

You would have to pull and completely tear down the engine (and subsequently) rebuild it to get it milled.
I can think of two reasons to justify it, one is that it is not flat, the other is that you want to increase compression. So if either of these reasons can justify the expense for you, then that's the way to go, IMHO.

 

[Lazy JW]

I wouldn't be afraid to run it PROVIDED it checks out out for flatness.

 

[CZLN6]

Howdy All:

And, The new style composite head gaskets can compensate for more variations than the OEM style steel shim head gaskets. Just make sure that you mill the head to compensate for the differences in head gasket thikness or you'll lose compression.

Adios, David

 

[SteveS]

It's simply amazing how much damage the engine will tolerate. That head is a mess and the engine still ran.