ring lands? head gasket? you decide...
 

about 2 weeks ago, just driving home not racing or anything (highway speeds), my car (14B@10psi, y7/z6 mini, comp 59300 cam) started bogging. when i got to my house, it was running on three cyilnders. I pulled the plugs one by one, and #4 cylinder made no difference. I checked for spark and there was spark. A compression check revealed 180-180-180-90

anyways, yesterday i got around to pulling the head off. I expected to find pieces of piston everywhere. instead, i see perfect cylinder walls, unscarred pistons, unscarred combusion chambers, and a nice dark brown hue to everything (not lean). the MLS head gasket which was new when i installed the engine/turbo less than 1,000 miles ago looked pretty fucked up. especially compared to ones that i've reused before with no problem. Only a week before the car shot ----, i noticed it was starting to get hot and burn water.

anyways, my question is this.....Is it possible to see ringland damage without removing the pistons; is it safe to assume that since the top looks good and so do the cylinder walls that the head gasket is the culprit?

if anybody has experience please help me out. I really dont want to tear down this block only to find out its just the head gasket. BTW, i reused headbolts numerous times.. think its just time to get a new gasket and some new OEM head bolts or are my ringlands fried?

Re:ring lands? head gasket? you decide...
 

get some new head bolts and a new oem head gasket.


also, check the head for warpage

Re:ring lands? head gasket? you decide...
 

I dont know howd youd check for ringland damage, maybe you can pour a bit of oil into cylinder #3 and 4 with maybe a 1/4 cup or something at the same time (extra set of hands) and maybe if the ringland is broken it will leak out of the cylinder quite a bit quicker than #3. I dunno, just came to me.

Was #4 part of the headgasket mangled?

Re:ring lands? head gasket? you decide...
 

fill the cyl w/ oil and see if it drains out ;)

also, re-using a headgasket!?!? NO NO NO!

get ARP head bolts and a y8 or z6 gasket and you'll be good to go.

loosing coolant is probably a bad gasket sealing around the water jacket.

Re:ring lands? head gasket? you decide...
 

i didnt reuse this head gasket, im saying that, this new MLS gasket looked 10x worse with only 1,000 virgin miles on it than ones i've reused in the past.

Re:ring lands? head gasket? you decide...
 

anybody else have any ideas? Abaz? I know you've blown quite a few engines.. whats your take on this situation?

Re:ring lands? head gasket? you decide...
 

If you were burning water and overheating, then probably the headgasket. Or at least that wouild be my guess.

Re:ring lands? head gasket? you decide...
 

when i broke my ringlands the walls were not scarred at all. id put a new HG and new head bolts in it if the hg looked jacked up

Re:ring lands? head gasket? you decide...
 

I would spend the extra half hour to take the #4 piston out just to be 100% sure it wasn’t a ringland. Im super lazy and wouldn’t want to take it apart again when your so close now.

Re:ring lands? head gasket? you decide...
 

if he takes it apart, that means new rings/hone cylinder, new bearings. checking clearences ext.

dont take it out!!!!!!!!!1