New Head Gasket Advice - 81 Ford Granada GL 3.3L 200 6-Cyl

[tony1963]

My friends and I pulled the cylinder head this morning. The head gasket and all appear to be original. It is a mesh of wafer styled steel and in one place, was corroded through. Small hole that let coolant leak up the head bolts. Don't see any cracks in the head.

Taking this and the exhaust manifold to the machine shop Monday. The steel air pipes for the exhaust manifold will need replaced. I'll have the machine shop make this assembly since you cannot buy it anymore and it does have a small hole rusted in the small pipe.

The biggest surprise was the front converter. After we pulled the head and exhaust manifold as an assembly, I pulled the head pipe and front converter unit. Looking down the 4 inch can at the exhaust manifold seems that the converter guts are GONE! The entire converter must have desinigrated over the years and blew out the tailpipe!

 

[early ford fan]

thats strange.the converter on my camaro is empty too.lol

 

[JackFish]

The head gasket and all appear to be original. It is a mesh of wafer styled steel and in one place, was corroded through.

Since no one else has chimed in on this, this is odd. I suspect that it is not an original gasket cue to the fact there is no "wafer mesh" on an original shim.

Can you post a pic?

 

[tony1963]

From what we could tell, this is all original. No exhaust gasket, no evidence that anyone has ever done anything to this engine. The car only had 32k original miles on it when I bought it.

 

[JackFish]

Might be a good idea to measure the thickness of the gasket, cc the chambers and verify the current compression ratio.

 

[tony1963]

My machine shop doesn't seem to be interested in cutting more than their standard cut off the head. I'm going to leave the decision to them and use the standard Fel Pro/Sealed Power composite head gasket.

I have the hardned steel washers for the head bolts just because they had plenty at Lowes. I'll use them but probably don't really need to worry.

My objective here is to get the car back on the road and running reliably. It never was "powerful" but adequate. Not real good on gas, either. Around 20 on the highway.

I'm glad to be able to get the emissions back in order so that the car can pass emissions.