Head gasket?bigger, bigger, bigger!

Guru's help!

Have just rebuilt the top end on my engine, cylinder heads were re-worked and surface skimmed, new gaskets, cylinder liners not moved, head torqued correctly, BUT:

I have just filled with coolant and find that water is weeping from the centre of each bank on the inner of the v and the exhaust side. I assume this is not normal.

What should I do?

1/Strip engine from car and start again, horror
2/ Loossen head bolts and re-torque
3/ Don't worry about it!! Engine first start will 'even things out' before 2 nd retorque (in my dreams)

Thanks

Number 1 I reckon.......have the heads snagged on liners? Are they seated properly?

If it's not even run and water's coming out then it can't be seated properly .Would worry me that it's doing it on both ,that might mean the machining's wink if you're sure you've bolted it down in the correct sequence and the liners haven't moved .Sounds like it's bowed .

The heads shouldn't be skimmed didn't know this when I had mine done a few years back But it's been fine since so I don't think it was skimmed as such ,just cleaned up .What headwork have you had done ?

Clee, think heads can be skimmed, but not by too much, otherwise the head will no longer 'match' up with the chain covers

But!!! My heads apear to have stopped weeping along the gasket line, not sure if ishould be happy or a little worried still.

Do the headgaskets expand when wetted? Logicaly it seems that they must, as if you consider liner protrusion above the cylinder block then something (of varying thickness) must take up the 'slack'.

I have checked my cylinders, and they are all bone dry so apear to have a good seal here.

I think I must cross my fingers, and continue to 'start up'!

I'd be worried....... I've never had any trouble with weeping head gaskets after torqueing them down.

EVERY head warps on an engine (or so I'm told). We made the mistake once of taking 3000 mile mint heads from one engine and bolting them to another block and they failed very quickly because the heads had warped to the original engine and then didn't match the new one. Took them off, had them skimmed and they were fine after that.

Don't worry about skimming heads. As long as the engineering company knows that you just want a couple of microns off purely to clean it up. They also need to tell you of any serious warping.

Our blokie does some sort of trick with a jig and an oven to straiten heads, then skims them to make them shiny.

Never had to do the same car twice using heads done by him.

In your case I would question whether the block's straight.