97Dually

Man with this 98 I can't seem to win. Just did the HG with ARP head studs to 125#'s last month. Head seemed flat, really flat, with a metal guide. Gasket held great for about 10 weeks. Bumped the timing from 14.5 to 17.5 and two weeks later, well, not good. I was on the freeway today doing 62mph (15-1600 rpms) and I noticed my heater started blowing cold when on HOT setting. So I watched the temp gauge and sure enough....started running at almost 200*. Immediately I pulled off at the next exit. Got into a parking lot and popped the hood. I had radiator fluid bubbling out the overflow resivoir. (Yesterday I checked for good measure and was only bright green and 1/2 full. A closer look at the O/F bottle revealled a small sheen of oil. Crap!
Anyway, when I pulled the dipstick I saw a very small (1/8") line of Baby-crap brown, at the top of the dipstick. All oil below looked dark and normal.

Please tell me its an oil cooler....

gammon

man i hate to say it but it sounds like head gasket. we went through 4 last year pulling and this year we put copper and it has been the best thing i ever did flatoutgasketgroup.com any thickness you want. one secret to it is when putting the gasket in put just a little clear silicon around all the water ports. and get the gasket already siliconed and ready to install by them.

97Dually

gammon-

All I'm doing is driving this truck back and forth from work. I do tow a 5000lb boat about 2-4x per month. This is getting old...........

I looked up the guys you mentioned above and got the part number for the motor. I'll give em a call this week.

What mod is doing in the head gasket?

Tom

gammon

mods arent what gets the head gasket. its if you add fuel and dont add more air to cool it or water it gets the egt's to high and thats usually what gets it.
what all have you done.delivery valves with a plate on a stock turbo will do it in a heartbeat.

97Dually

Honestly, I have never gone over 1100* Usually I've done 1000*. I am a hawk on temps. I think my 17.5* timing killed it. I spoke with a guy that builds motors up for pulling. He told me that with my set-up, a HG failure was darned unusual. OR, could be a problem with the block. This trucks never overheated. Babied, as far as I'm concerned. I spoke to the people about a copper gasket--as was reccommended above. They told me I was not reccommeded to put that kind of gasket on my truck for my application. They gave me a number of someone to call and that racer fella told me that I should have had the heads shaved to get a near pefect surface and THEN I would be fine. He runs a 150#'s of boost and he uses the copper gaskets. He told me that I definetly don't need that. Just make sure to do the heads first. That was probably where we went wrong last time. Even though they were below (better) that cummins specs, cut 'em anyway. He said with 17.5 degrees timing, cut the head 10 thousands of an inch, add a 20 thousands over marine Cummins gasket, ARP studs (already using) and I should be fine for ever! Wish we would have cleaned up the heads anyway....lastime.

Tom

mods-100 plate, star wheel mid position, 255 tires, 17.5 timing, that's about it. I want reliability more that performance...

gammon

that sounds like a good plan to me if thats all you plan on doing as far as mods.i went the other way for two reasons 1 because the head gasket is about the same money and you need to true the head for either gasket 2 the copper gasket is almost indistructible. i have found its better to over kill on these trucks than to do just enough then it will last.

gammon

was looking around and seen this. https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...d.php?t=120978

97Dually

Yikes!! That sucks....wonder what happened.

gammon

I donnt know I just got sick of changing head gaskets myself. so i did the copper gasket myself its just as cheap.

97Dually

The racing team guy I spoke with was a pretty interesting guy. He told me that Copper gaskets seep. But they figure it's a controlled seep. He went on to say they never really seal. Its just that they don't actually blow out like gasket material. I guess at 150lbs of boost, they need them gaskets to kinda stay put. One of the mod's that they have been playing with is adding an insert for the cylinders (actually cutting out the copper part) that will actually stop the seepage but still hold their high boost numbers. As it is he said they were reshaving heads every four races, and adding new gaskets due to over "seepage". When I told him 30-35lbs of boost he actually smirked.

Tom

gammon

With that kind of boost you should be able to make a stock gasket hold. The gasket people told me to put a little silicon around each water port and it would be fine to run copper at any boost level and you wont blow it is the good thing about these gaskets. They have held up good on our pulling truck better than any other gasket. We have pulled on this one all year and its still doing fine. We have ran 65lb on it all year.

97Dually

Awesome!

gammon

thats just my two cents hope it helps in making your dission. good luck with witch ever way you go.

97Dually

Thanks.

Do you think my timing was/is too high? (17.5)

gammon

no we are running higher than that. last year we ran 15 till we blew the first one then when we replaced it we bumped it to 18 and it made it run a little cooler on egt's and ran better two.