Tom-Guy

O-ringing works, but you have annoying cosmetic oil/coolant leaks associated with them... or steel wire with copper headgasket anyway. Played with a blown up 1.9 liter GSR that had OEM (bored out Cometic) headgasket and copper wire laid across the top of Darton closed deck sleeves (pre-MID sleeve design, not sure if there's a real difference). No experience or opinion on that, interesting idea. I still have a spare spool of copper wire from that car in my toolbox...

However, on a stock bore engine (plenty of meat on the deck to seal with) running an SC34 (max 450whp or so), o-rings would be a waste of time, money, effort.

BTW, I've seen o-ring grooves laid into the *head* of a SOHC before... sidesteps the worry about cutting a groove into an open deck w/ limited sealing surface, but I'm not sure how well that ultimately works out.

sohcpwr

any ideas on the cost of the groove? My buddy is considering it for a b16 build. what wire diameter were you using? I know if you use too big of a wire you'll get the leaks your talking about.

so steel wire and copper hg gives you leaks?
but your copper wire and steel hg didnt leak on the gsr? dont know if you mixed them up in the beginning

Tom-Guy

Copper head gaskets give you leaks... little "mossy" areas at the head to block seam similar to a cam cap on a DOHC's exhaust cam that barely barely barely seeps as it gets old... you lose no appreciable amount of oil or coolant but you have a messy area that attracts dirt.

I only saw the 1.9 liter GSR run once, and have really no idea or experience with steel headgasket + copper wire. I'll run downstairs right now and see if I turn up the wire to tell you it's gauge, but I'm 30 min from having to work - I don;t find it asap pester me later.

Tom-Guy

Okay, I have the copper wire in hand but I dunno how much help I am. The damn label's torn off of it.

It's a small spool like the ones Radio Shack solder comes in. Looking at the wire, it's approx the diameter of MIG or flux core wire... 0.030? 0.035? I haven't unpacked my dial calipers to be able to tell you.

If you get impatient, call up RPM NYC and ask them, they built the GSR engine in question a few years back. They deal with that stuff all the time, and would be able to advise.