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Head crack (small enough to ignore?)


Tycho
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I'm not very taken with the idea of spending money having these heads welded...but this crack has some length to it...

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dgiessel/.Pictures/misc/12_26_04/

 

Just peen it down and keep the radiator full?

 

These heads are just a disaster as far as anything is concerned. It's like a couple dropout mechanical engineers got drunk one night and decided to play around in CAD.

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I have the technical service bulletein that says bridge cracks between the valves are fine and cause no harm. As long as they don't extend into the ports and there is no coolant loss, everything is peachy.

 

It's a good idea to use a small punch to "flatten" the protruding part a little. This will help reduce the sharp edge, which could potentially get hot and turn into a glow plug.

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The other head looks more questionable...

 

I agree. I wouldn't use the second one, although there are some people that would say this one is "normal" too.

Took me awhile to accept those cracks, but they are present in a lot of good running EA82's. I always take them to my machine shop for a second opinion before re-using them. In practice, about half of the cylinder heads from junk motors are worthy of using on a quality rebuild project - if you have reasonably high standards.

good luck, John

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yell i have put heads on for alleyboy with them being reconditioned. but i have used heads in pull-off condition for my own uses.

 

the last head job i did was a porting of turbo heads. there were cracks between the valves of both heads. cracks between the valves are a normal feature on most any ea82 head, even carb and spfi. there is no passages between the valves its all meat.

 

i see your concern with the crack inside the valve chamber, but on the heads that i ported the cracks went all the way down to the valve guide. i used these heads anyway, since there was no problem with them on the motor we took them from(bad rod bearing) since then the heads have seen over 10,000 miles, including a trip cross country, and built up on a carb block for 8.5 compression

 

i would not worry about the cracks, but you mat want to take some preventative measures like peening them shut, drilling some relief holes, or driving in a pin to fill them, stake the valve seats in

 

the only problem the cracks can lead to is if they expand too large it may drop a valve seat.

 

pull off any known good ea82 turbo head that is in perfect working order and i bet you will find these cracks on nearly all of them

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