We’ve had too many head gaskets fail. Most of them have torn between cylinders two and three, like the one you see below, which was removed this week from a 1275-powered car after about 8700 miles of use.
We are determined to prevent this from happening to clients in the future. So we now offer a three-layered metal racing head gasket as a superior solution, our strongest head gasket yet. This upgrade is particularly smart if you are supercharging or otherwise boosting the compression on your Spridget.
We also recommend new ARP studs if you are having gasket issues, to best secure your head to your block. The engine we are working on here has had them installed to best secure the head.
Why does this happen? There are lots of opinions about this.
Heat is the biggest culprit. If you overheat your engine, head gasket failure is a serious risk. Our aluminum radiators and six bladed fans are your best weapon against heat.
Timing is another suspect… you have to have it right. Pre-ignition can lead to head gasket failure. If you’d like a trick way to dial-in the advance curve (using bluetooth from your phone!) to custom tune your car’s ignition, check out our programmable electronic distributor in our parts catalog by clicking below…
Octane also needs to be strong. High octane fuel (such as pump premium) seems less likely to cause pre-ignition. I use premium (USA) pump gas in all my Bugeyes to ensure I have a high enough octane number. Remember, octane degrades over time, so you stabilizer if you think your car will sit for more than 60 days, to keep the fuel as fresh as possible.
For all of our performance builds from this point onward, we will be using the three layer gasket you see here. We used one in the car that had the torn head gasket above, and we expect that to be the last head gasket that car will ever need. They are more expensive than the composite gaskets we used to use, we’re excited to only have to do this job once, and thus it is cheap insurance!
Click the photo below to order this uprated gasket and learn more!
