E30 Zone

hi all, i have managed to blow the head gasket again on my m20 turbo i think its my fault for caining it too much before it been set up correctly

i have been using a elring head gasket which cost about £20 so not to costly, so my question is what stock gasket are you usingon your turbo? as im not sure elring are the best to be using

elring are absolutly fine it blew coz of your tuning
what boost you running ?

i have a bar spring in my wastegate, im not sure what boost it was when it blew the laptop battery went flat and it didnt record it in the log, i was thinking about getting a bmw one but if elring is as good ill stick with them

1 bar should be about your limit safely but if it wasn't mapped then I'd say it was your tuning as to why it went pop
elring are like BMW Oem part that's what BMW use

Sound, 2nd gasket in 2 weeks yay! I'm using arp's and torquing the head to 30nm +90 +90 that's correct?

no that's not correct that's BMW spec not arp spec do them 25 lb ft 45 lb ft then 60lb ft then do a warm up run then down to 70lb ft I've got an elring on mine and I'm running about 1.3 bar

i see that could be my problem, i spoke to my suplier and he said there is a thicker head gasket if your head has been skimmed does that sound right for a 8.8:1 compression engine?

thanks for your help hopefully its the last gasket for a while

there is a thicker head gasket @ 2.05mm I think but that won't do you any favours it will still be fine up to 9.0-1
you need to get the tune spot on what management you using?

I'm using vems ecu from gunni, I'm just going to repaire it and take it easy until gunni can map it, I already have the thicker gasket on order so I'll stick it on as the head was skimmed at the start

with a thicker head gasket there even more chance that it will blow due to the thickness the head can move around more
I would have stuck with a normal gasket again personally

ross2009 wrote:with a thicker head gasket there even more chance that it will blow due to the thickness the head can move around more
I would have stuck with a normal gasket again personally

Ross bit unsure what you mean there mate. What do you mean the head will move around?

I didn't really explain that very well there's more area on the ring lands to blow under pressure

ross2009 wrote:I didn't really explain that very well there's more area on the ring lands to blow under pressure

Ah fair play I see what you mean now

Do you think if it developed a miss fire at high speed it would cause head gasket failure?

Head gasket failiure ir rarely present due to high boost. Gasket moustly fails because you have detonation in your cylinders! Get the car tuned before you brake some internal parts of your engine. Detonation is your worst enemy!!

P.S. what afr, intake temperatures and ignition timing are you runing?

Uh i have vems ecu,I don't know how to map it or the settings myself I have got this far through logging and emAils, Any how it's all back running and torqued down correctly sounds better than ever at the moment

Get it tuned, because if you have detonation problems - you'll blow another gasket (again).

You can try connecting LED to knock sensor to check realtime detonation... search google for it.

its all sorted now had it tuned, should of waited first time around