Hello Folks
i was hopefully going to load a few pictures of my finally finished civilian M20 restoration as is looking great. I'll have to postpone that a little as the bloody head gasket went after around 5 - 6 miles; thankfully only 200 yrds from home so could push it.
I attach a pic of the gasket. This was a new copper gasket from Drags after a modest engine strip (just head /barrel valve grind etc). I torqued to 30 ft-lb and then again at least twice after warm up and cool down.
Any ideas of what happened here? Ive seen comments about overheating and wondered about that and maybe there is some clue in cylinder head colour near the plug; its a bit whitish? Also noted that when i opend oil tank after stopping; it was smoking in there? Ive never looked in there before when hot and so dont know if this is normal or not for a hot bike.
The bike is a bit of a bugger to start (10 kicks or so) but runs really smooth on stand and quickly idles at 0 advance and no choke, maybe suggesting timing is ok?
In the short time it ran I thought had low power, up a mild hill it struggled in 3rd but maybe gasket had already given a little?
The timing was good recently and spent ages checking/double checking. Will do again this week.
any suggestions would be much appreciated.
cheers
Neil
email (option): nlhclarke@gmail.com