Gouged newly-resurfaced cylinder head

[stoatmax]

Hi all,

I'm an idiot and I was carrying my resurfaced heads in my trunk for too long, and the inevitable happened: one of them rolled over and got banged up on the studs sticking out of the other one. I've attached pics of the damage, below.

What does this mean for the future of this cylinder head? Is it salvageable, and if so, what do i need to do?

Thanks.

 

[sperold]

Buy a nice new file from you favourite supplier (I saw the Harbor Freight flyer) and go over all the areas where the gasket covers the head.

On the areas where the gasket does not cover ,that are near the combustion chamber, smooth all the dents and and leave no sharp edges. You will need the set of small files that come in a flat pack and can almost fit in your shirt pocket. You might even need the tiny dremmel stones, but it is easy to get carried away with them.

The goal is to have no sharp edges in the exposed area not sheilded by the head gasket, in the combustion area zone.

 

[Off Road SHO]

What Sperold said. On the flat gasket surface, use two finger method to determine when the raised nick is flat. If you can slide the file with two fingers on top of the file, you are good to go. No heavy handed filing on aluminum heads.

Tom

 

[rubydist]

before you do anything, lay the head gasket on it, and see if that nick that is right at the edge of the combustion chamber goes all the way across the metal ring of the head gasket that surrounds the cylinder. If the nick goes all the way or nearly all the way across that metal ring, you're screwed no matter how well you do at taking off the raised burrs.