And what happens to the motor.

Is that the same thing as head float?

 

Basically what happens when you float or lift the head, the head lifts up off the block surface, stretches your headstuds/bolts whatever you are using. It would of also caused damage to your headgasket because compression or exhaust has escaped from and made it through the gasket and into the coolant system. This will cause very little holes to appear in the gasket at first sometimes the size of pinoles.

Eventually the holes will get bigger and bigger until the headgasket will blow, which will cause overheating and alot of white smoke from the exhaust in most cases.

Every car that I have ever had a head lift on, it pressurized the coolant system which in return made the coolant tank spew or overflow. It will also use a small amount of coolant over the time.

Usually a good metal or copper headgasket and ARP head studs will solve the problem, unless your runnning way to lean, and it heats up prematurely due to knock.

Hope this helped.

<small>[ December 09, 2002, 04:12 AM: Message edited by: broke7 ]</small>

 

broke7 said it all. Right on the money.

I will say this; Lifting heads is most commonally associated with high boost. You just don't really see it with normally asperated engines.

 

Yeah, ask 383LQ4SS about it (head lifting) while using healthy shots of gas. He was using studs also. He's a moderator in the nitrous section.

 

A 150 shot will do it on a H&C ls1 motor. Mine did. Blew the tube off the header, and a week after that, (still racing it) I noticed dried coolant around the head, in the front. I might have a picture here somewhere. I will take more pics when the motor comes out. It ran fine when not on the spray. Maybe I caught it early enough before anything serious happened.

 

Yah most of my experience from with Talons and Eclipses. I found 23psi to be the limit on a 600cfm turbo and stock Headgasket "HG" and stock bolts. Car would be fine at the track, it would just spew some coolant. On the drive home it would heat up, from the system being pressurized.

I went ahead and pulled the head, installed ARP studs and 4 layer metal HG, and everything seemed good. I was running about 28psi on racegas and 23psi on pump gas car made good power about 415whp and went 11.61@119. Make sure you check your torque after a couple of heat cycles, I didnt. I learned the hard way, one of nuts backed off on the studs to about 50ft/lb, and blew the Hg again and warped the head and scored the block.

So check your torque.....at least I do now.

Just an experience I had.