Head fire rings

[Rawze]

Just breaking it down so that people can learn here...

* A fire ring (part of the head gasket) on an ISX will not fail (or get crushed and split) unless the liner is dancing in the block/has dropped, etc. -- There are no real exceptions to this if the head, gasket, etc. was properly installed and head properly torqued.

* An ISX will never blow a head gasket (or damage a fire ring) unless the liner for that cylinder is dancing in the block/has dropped, etc. -- There are no real exceptions to this, especially if the head, gasket, liners were at this forums recommended height, head torqued as recommended by the forum here, etc. was properly all installed/torqued etc. during the engine build.

- This means that someone has been listening to a bunch of complete morons if they think that modifying fire rings and other things to keep head gaskets from blowing out is even remotely any kind of proper solution. It would be like slicing your hand open with a knife because you were too lazy to grab a cutting board while cooking .. and then trying to put a band-aide on it. - I GOT A BETTER IDEA.. DON'T SLICE YOUR HAND OPEN by taking a moment to make things safe to begin with!.

People/repair shops, engine butchering(tuning) shops, etc. abuse truck owners equipment with bad deletes and inadequate repairs/inframes + do all kinds of things improperly. They create all of these problems including the types of issues that you mentioned above.

Instead of doing things right.. straightening out bad programming, improving how they do repairs and how they build the engine while inframing it, etc. etc.. and learning how to avoid these kinds of mistakes that they themselves are responsible for ... they then go about blaming the engine designs and coming up with all kinds of other half-baked garbage ideas.

Liner failure/dropping (and therefore head gasket failure) can be avoided by ...

* #1 reason they let go prematurely... Putting a bad delete file in the ecm, of which more than 90%+ of all shops/tuning people doing delete programming are all guilty of. This is the number one cause of all premature engine and turbocharger failures any more. Here is a video where I talk about this: https://youtu.be/sQESWU3_wAI

* #2 reason is someone who is lugging the engine to death below 1500 rpms. Although they are advertised to be able to make low end rpm and will make it .. The ISX HATES LOW RPM TORQUE!. It shortens the engine life by half, almost always leading to a dropped liner/head gasket failure, when people drive them hard up hills and such, etc... below 1500 rpm. Better vehicle gearing (usually the rear end gears) is the solution to most of this problem.


* #3 reason is that the more torque/power put (and used) into the engine.. the shorter that its lifespan will be. 485HP/1750trq will almost always last 900k to 1mil+ miles (or equivalent engine hours)... and 600HP/2050trq will almost always only last about 550-650k miles (or equivalent hours), or less if tortured in heavy-haul applications at low rpm's. This leads to #4 reason ...

* #4 Bottom end torque response is a heavy contributor towards shortened engine life. The "harder you make one accelerate from a dead stop", the shorter the lifespan of the engine will be.. by a lot!. This is exactly why the CM570 and CM870 would last a very long time vs. a CM2350 or X15 engine. If that X15 engine was made as lazy on the bottom end as an old CM570 or CM870 was, then it would last just as long if not longer.

* #5 reason.. is NOT counter-boring and raising the liners height to a minimum of 0.014" (0.015" recommended) during an inframe, plus not letting the head gasket crush properly so that the head bolts can be re-torqued again the next day. - These mistakes that again, about 95% of all repair shops fail to do. ref: http://rawze.com/forums/showthread.php?t...3#pid48553

These are all liner/fretting problems.. not head or gasket issues. Trying to modify the head gasket in some way is fruitless. It is the prevention of the liner(s) from dancing/fretting in the block that keep the head gasket from giving way.

Everybody then goes about blaming everything but these mistakes listed here, that they made themselves, and wonder why the engine did not last very long. Therefore, there will always be some morons who are always inventing some redneck ways of trying to patch up problems that most of the time, they in fact created, it all out of sheer utter stupidity!.

If someone avoids ALL # of the things listed above, then it would become very rare for a liner to drop/head gasket failure to occur in less time-span than what is expected/mentioned above.