Athena MLS 1.2mm Headgasket

Fitted my new Athena head gasket yesterday and its leaking water and oil. Very very small amounts of both but none the less its leaking!! After a quick search on here it seems i'm not the first person to have trouble with them. Gasket has been fitted correctly.

Head surface skimmed
Block surface cleaned
New head bolts + Washers
Torqued to correct spec
Gasket placed correctly

Where do i stand or have i just thrown £120 down the shitter!!??

is it leaking from between the head and the block?

Yes mate its leaking between head and block. The most noticeable leak is where the block is stamped. There is one other leak
right in the middle of the head at exhaust side. Leaks are very very small but increase as engine comes under pressure.

thing is with multi layer steel head gaskets is they are metal so unlike a composite gasket when compressed it doesn't make a spot on seal(fill every scratch or nick). even the hatch pattern on the head skim is enough to make them leak at times. best bet is to get the block decked and the head skimmed but with a finer stone if they do it :/. I picked this info up when watching a race car engine build video.

Did u check that the block surface was straight?

re tighten the head bolts ,im sure it may seal its self after a good heat up

jake oneill said:

re tighten the head bolts ,im sure it may seal its self after a good heat up

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as above, try that first. dont go mad though.

i had the same trouble when i fitted a mls headgasket to a rover k series. sorted the coolant leak with some radweld, still has a slight oil leak from one corner though.

Engine is only back together, hoping to get a chance to get a couple of casual miles done over the weekend. Didn't tighten the head bolts any more than whats spec'd just yet....just re checked torque today across all 10 in correct sequence. Will report back after i get a couple of miles up on the engine and we'll see if it sorts itself out, but as far as im aware steel head gaskets generally don't seal any better than when first installed

i've never had any issues with metal head gasket but i do feel for you mate, it sounds like you've done everything properly as well.

You are correct though if its not sealed this time then chances are it isn't going it.

unfortunately once its bolted down they can't be re-used and you know what there manufacturer is going to say "its down to poor installation"

If you take it all apart again i would double check the block and head to see how flat they really are, normally if there perfect you shoudln't get any leaks at all.

Ben10, blocks and heads are skimmed with a huge circular cutter which is a cutting blade, not a stone which is grinding. It can be done this way but that's not the "technically correct" machine for doing this, its an engineering machine for making flat surfaces but the proper engine building tool is alot more accurate and is a blade, Means you don't get imperfections in the surface as the stones heat up and expand, or get a slightly different profile from start of the job to the end as the stone wears slightly.

For MLS head gasket ideally you want a surface roughness of 50 to 60 microinch Ra range, this will give a perfect sealing finish. The other thing to check is that the head and block were decked correctly and haven't been done slightly on the piss which will make it hard for the gaskets to seal again.

Tim

knew it was somthing like that. do you have a demo car man like a ep70 with a 3sgte running 700 hp XD

who me?

no, i deal in all toyotas but i do have a glanza as my daily drive, but only running about 200bhp so nothing insane. I have built stupid bhp cars in the past but for my own cars i like to keep things more sensible, Glanza at 200bhp, just sold my mr2 that was runing just over 400bhp, and just bought a supra which will go upto around 600bhp by the end of the year, workshop load depending.

I like to build alround cars with good balance, and to much power just destroys that and makes the cars actually slower

Tim@TBDevelopments said:

who me?

no, i deal in all toyotas but i do have a glanza as my daily drive, but only running about 200bhp so nothing insane. I have built stupid bhp cars in the past but for my own cars i like to keep things more sensible, Glanza at 200bhp, just sold my mr2 that was runing just over 400bhp, and just bought a supra which will go upto around 600bhp by the end of the year, workshop load depending.

I like to build alround cars with good balance, and to much power just destroys that and makes the cars actually slower

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very fair point. wish i had a garage and all the tools. would love to build motors for a living. stuck with mechanical and accident repair . i want to tune

i only started off small mate, well still running from a small workshop, like to keep things small so i can guarantee quality then over just going for huge place with plenty of staff as work quality always suffers

Right said i'd report back after weekend, was very pissed off so went and bought a standard head gasket and fitted it over the weekend. Once again the standard gasket was fitted properly and it sealed up perfect. Gave the engine a little runing in period before i razzed it a bit and standard gasket held perfect.

Toyota 1 - Athena 0

Still very annoyed over this whole problem as it cost me £120 and two full days work.

Pete EP82 said:

Right said i'd report back after weekend, was very pissed off so went and bought a standard head gasket and fitted it over the weekend. Once again the standard gasket was fitted properly and it sealed up perfect. Gave the engine a little runing in period before i razzed it a bit and standard gasket held perfect.

Toyota 1 - Athena 0

Still very annoyed over this whole problem as it cost me £120 and two full days work.

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deff sounds like the block or head is warped but thats the joy of stock gaskets the seal alot better

The correct way is to surface grind the block and do a good skim job on the head.
If you do not do the block then simply just use copper gasket spray

i find the best way is to machine skim the block. Grind denotes a stone which is the wrong tool for the job. You want a cutting blade to do this properly.

Tim

Tim bud, surface grinding is your most accurate and has best result for surface finish. You know this

This is the correct tools and method.
Link
Link

People do not do this any more as it is expensive to maintain the machine and the labour is also expensive.
But people like Tim here most probably will net you the same results by skimming
Very few shops can skim a block to be 100% correct. And this is important when using MLS gaskets

see I've always gone the otherway with it, I found that grinding with a stone gave inaccurate results, probably down to incorrect maintaince. The links you've shown are a proper head skimming machine, where most of places I've seen use a grinding stone to skim used a normal engineering skimmer which isn't accurate enough for a cylinder head etc. I also find that the stones would clog with the fine allow material unless correct coolant flow was required

This is why I like to skim with a cutter instead, Basically the same machine just much slower, fast spinning disk cutter, looks the same as the ones in the links about 2ft across, and then slowly moves the block/head to the cutter, takes about 10mins to go from one side to the other. Gives a perfectly flat finish, also allows to correct for incorrect alignment of the cylinder head from previous work or even I've seen from the factory. This gets picked up when you CC the combustion chambers

Tim

Yeah, my friend uses a normal milling machine with a home made tungsten cutter. Works fine but is a bit slow
Copper spray and ARPs won't let you down