head studs & gasket suggestions?

[GOOSE]

My 1991 250k miles 7.3 is running an ATS turbo. I can max the boost at 14psi on a good day. The IP screw is all but maxed and blows plenty of black smoke. One head was rebuilt last year the other is origional. Oil in antifreeze made me believe oil cooler was suspect. Now large antifreeze consumption and other quirks like a miss on startup and occasional hydrolock lead me to head gasket. I want to keep performance and possibly increase hp more in future. I am taking both heads off, getting other rebuilt to match new head. Any suggestions on head studs and gaskets that will hold up? I have seen ARP stuff, steer away from Ebay stuff? What about fire ring gaskets? Don't know much about that. Not sure I can afford o-ringing at this time.

 

[65sixbanger]

If you say you wanna increase the power someday, I would do the bottom-end of the engine since you are pullin the heads anyways.

 

[GenLightening]

My 1991 250k miles 7.3 is running an ATS turbo. I can max the boost at 14psi on a good day. The IP screw is all but maxed and blows plenty of black smoke. One head was rebuilt last year the other is origional. Oil in antifreeze made me believe oil cooler was suspect. Now large antifreeze consumption and other quirks like a miss on startup and occasional hydrolock lead me to head gasket. I want to keep performance and possibly increase hp more in future. I am taking both heads off, getting other rebuilt to match new head. Any suggestions on head studs and gaskets that will hold up? I have seen ARP stuff, steer away from Ebay stuff? What about fire ring gaskets? Don't know much about that. Not sure I can afford o-ringing at this time.

There aren't any fire ring set ups yet. It would be a custom one off and major $$$. Wanna be the first? Since it's a 7.3, you may want to check for cavitation. Do a compression test, if all the #s are good then the head gaskets are probably fine and there may be a pinhole in a cylinder. May still be the oil cooler and now an injector is leaking? Are they originals? Pull them and see if the tips are wet. For head studs, you'll need to go directly to ARP, ICANFIXALL has a couple of posts with the part #s for the 7.3. Hopefully it's one of the simple fixes.

 

[GOOSE]

The injectors are one year old turbo series. I have a lower mileage motor that I can do a full rebuild possibly with lower compression pistons in the future. Just looking to get this one road worthy now and not waste money. After new year will be traveling about 115 miles a day to work. looking for best and easiest way to fix. Not afraid to spend a little extra to ensure a better fix, I thought reusing stock bolts may be a gamble

 

[RLDSL]

Using a set of Victor Reinz gaskets with a few coats or spray Hylomar on each side will give you a leak free seal.
I don't know if anyone has got anywhere with the MLS ( multi layer steel ) gaskets yet, those would be a step up, but would require a near mirror finish on the heads and the block deck. Not many machine shops are capable of producing this finish on a diesel head with precups

 

[87crewdually]

ARP studs and felpro gaskets you'll be fine. The most important is to assemble very clean (wiping mating surfaces with alcohol or thinner) and properly torque the nuts for the studs.
1. In short you need to chase all the threads in the block.
2. Use ARP lube sparingly and only install studs in the block finger tight
3. Torque in proper sequence and formation (criss cross then inline z formation)ending up at 90 ftlbs
4. Then the one step many skip, Loosen them all up in order and formation and repeat the steps all over again 5 times.
I ended up torqueing mine a little higher at 106ftlbs. Some report that once everything is seated in the nuts were over 1/2 a turn from the first torqueing.

 

[jonathan]

i got my complete gasket set from the local machine shop you might wont to get your heads checked out