Posted by Jerry Dunaway on Thursday, January 03, 2002 at 9:18PM :
I have a 63 wm300 with a 251, and have replaced the head gasket2 times in the past month and it is blown again. I'll outline what I am doing and what I used, tell me if I'm messing up somewhere. I had the head milled the first time.
after removing the head, I clean both mating surfaces with spray gasket remover and scrape them with a straightedge razor blade
clean mating surfaces with acetone to remove any grease
coat both mating surfaces and both sides of new head gasket with Permatex copper gasket sealer (spray can type)
replace head on block making sure it goes straight down on block with no sideslippage
replace head bolts which have been cleaned and lubed with moly anti sieze grease (the bolt holes were also cleaned)
using sequence obtained from previous forum I first torque the bolts to 35ftlbs then to 70ftlbs.
replace antifreeze and vent air from head
run engine at idle until it reaches operating temperature
after it cools retorque headbolts using same sequence to 70ftlbs
I'm using a head gasket purchased locally from Carquest manufactured by Victor. It differs from the gasket that was on the engine previously. The Victor gasket has one layer of copper next to the block, a steel layer and then a fibrous materialnext to hte head, both of these gaskets have blown between the 5th and 6th cylinders at the center water jacket passage between the block and the copper layer.
any help will be appreciated
Jerry
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