O-ringed heads?

[dieseldummy]

Has anyone here tried this. It seems to be fairly common on high performance build ups. I read here in JeepSJ's post (http://forum.thedieselpage.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=007134) about a cummins swap, the fellow doing the conversion made his own tool to put in a drill press to cut a groove in the head. Would the same idea apply to the 6.5 to help keep the headgasket intact under high boost pressures?
Justin

[JeepSJ]

To really make it work, you need a head gasket that is designed to work with the o-ring. If I could have found the gaskets, I would have done that. Typically, the block is cut, not the heads.

[dieseldummy]

I thought it was a little strange that the head was cut instead of the block, I was always under the impression that it worked the other way around, but didn't really know. What is special about gaskets for o-ringing? Also thanks for the cool link.
Justin

[GMCHORSHAM]

Just thought I would chime in hear.
Try this site,
http://members.tripod.com/~A350Diesel/oring.html
The section is titled O-Ringing the Cylinders.
The information is about the 350 Olds' Diesel,
I have one of these motors retro fitted into a
Nissan Patrol 4x4.
However the info would be simular for most o-Ring
applications.
Hope the helps some.

[DA BIG ONE]

I have used solid copper head gasket w/o
o-ringing in a high boost 30 psi+ 2.3 ltr turbo motor with much success. Cheap, and reliable under pressure!

[Jim P]

I do some machine work on pulling tractor engines and I have machined the grooves in several engines. All these engines had cyl. liners so the grooves were actually machined in the top of the cyl. liners on a lathe. The ones that I have done use a .090" steel wire fire ring. We had a special gasket made to seal up the water and oil passages.

The trick is to machine the grooves to the proper depth so that steel wires contact the head before the gasket. When the head is torqued down, the steel ring crushes slighly and allows the head to come down to seal the water and oil. I have seen some rings that have crushed .010".

If you do the machining right, these hold very well. These tractors are running about 60 psi boost and are making about 450 hp using a roosemaster rotary injection pump that is very similar the db2 that is used on the 6.2s and early 6.5s

[Jim P]

I forgot to add this in my last post.

On one of the engines that I did, the guy just used a stock John Deere head gasket but he cut the original fire rings out. Then the steel rings were used in their place.