59FLH Problems

[Brrrap]

Had my heads done. New valves,springs,keepers,guides,seats,spigots. new gaskets used for the topend rebuild. Blue teflon type head gaskets. Ran the motor,re-torqued after warm up. left the driveway sounding good. Within one mile I see a little smoke and return home. Pics depict what I found. I'm very open to suggestions as to where I could have gone wrong. Appreciate everyone's input.

[RUBONE]

It looks like it may have blown the head gasket into the head bolt hole. The smoking could be that it is blown through into the return oil hole as well which will draw oil into the combustion chamber and also pressurize the rocker cover. Were the gasket surfaces on the heads machined at all during the head rebuild? If so the cylinder spigots may be contacting the head and not allowing full crush on the gasket. The only way to tell is to remove the heads and measure everything.
Good luck,
Robbie

[Schwee]

Is is possible that this one head bolt is too long? (Or crud in the head that's keeping it from going all the way in?)
I'd shim it with a washer and re-tourque before completely disassembling.

[Bosheff]

Do a compression or leakdown test. This won't tell ya why whatever happened, happened, but it should tell what's wrong....bosheff

[Brrrap]

Thanks Guys. New gaskets will be in my hands tomorrow. I'll keep you posted of what i find on tear down. Was thinking using copper head gaskets instead of the teflon but they were on back order, so it's blue ones again. I belive I've been told a few times to stay away fron the "Fire Ring" type so they're not considered. Thanks again to all in this fine forum.

[Brrrap]

Today I got the new replacement blue teflon gaskets for the Pan. I found out just how hard it is to get the old Blue teflon off the head. Gentle use of crisp Razors were the order of the day. Those gaskets come off like removing Hell from Religion! The new spigots were checked for clearance issues and none were found. I wasn't able to see any "Smoking guns" as to why the first gasket failed, but I have a theory. I might have run the bike initially a little too long before re-torquing the heads, allowing the head surface and the Jug surface to weep. after re-torquing the heads to spec there may have been a channel of oil already in place to the head bolts.I dunno? But I ran out of time for today, and I have to prepare for a 300 mile run to the "Childrens Burn Camp" as I do every year leaving in the morning. (prep is cleaning the 2002 bagger) Normally I like to ride the pan for this trip but I'm shot this time. I'll keep posting the results of this lil prob as I get back to normal with my beloved Pan. ----Bob---- Thanks again everyone.

[socalpig]

did you loosen the upper (top) motor mount