ALFAGTV6.COM

[Barry]

Tom,Im with you on the zink stuff,heard about it tears ago..

My 2.0l turbo cracked the head from cyl1 spark plug all the way back to cyl4 spark plug-right through to the water jacket.I drove this car,under extreme boost at ttimes for more than 2 years with this crack.
I used a Loctite product called"Gimme head"...eerrrm,sorry,"Indian head"..

This would seal this almighty crack for up to 4 months at a time.I would usually know it had opened up again as the car would start misfiring..

I do know that if your up against combustion pressure,nothing is going to seal the leak..Ive been up against this on a 156 3.8l 24v for the last 6 months...Ive finally beaten it with some radical welding and rings for the gasket setup,but this is another story..

If the leak goes into the chamber,it can be temporarily repaired..Other way round,your farting against thunder here....

Ive had the same with this little 20l turbo Im working on here,will post a pic of what I mean shortly..

[1166]

Of course putting it on the track period is not a smart move. You do not HAVE to run the event. Running the cooling system 'open' is not recipe for overheating. As long as you water temp stays under 200F (with pure water) you will be fine. Pressure helps keep the coolant from boiling up to about 240 or so in our cars (Alfa caps are .7 bar, or about 10psi).

If you choose to run your car this way, do everyone a favor and run water only in the cooling system. Antifreeze mix is very slippery on the track and bad things can happen.

Assuming it is your headgaskets failing to seal combustion pressure within the cylinder, there is no miracle cure. Maybe some extra torque will help. I have seen the results of several failed headgaskets (at time-trial events leaking as yours seems to be) and they resulted in blown engines after the gasket totally failed and sucked a cyllinder full of coolant and tried to compress it. It will blow the piston into many small pieces at the minimum...

[ar4me]

Of course putting it on the track period is not a smart move.

Thought I would give an update: I decided not to put any additives in there as I didn't want to run the risk of fouling my radiator, heater core, etc. Also, I didn't retorque the heads, nor did I run the cooling system open... Instead I brought some extra water and ran the engine as is. It ran well all weekend Only added about 1 qrt of water total - nothing like the 2 qrts per session at the short, "low speed" track. It probably is related to this being a high speed track. Two long "straights" one with a long sweeper where you hit somewhere between 110-120 mph, bouncing outwards before turn 9 comes at you in a hurry. I set the rev limiter at 5800 RPM to prevent reving it high and generate too much pressure, but it did see 5000+ - I didn't even baby it and it ran at a constant 175F - weather was nice and cool too.
Jes