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I ran my newly built 1050 engine this week for the first time and it leeks!!! I had started it up first and ran it up just for a couple of minutes and then a few days later to adjust the timing and carb's and oil was leaking from the R/H upper head stud. In hindsight perhaps I should have re-torqued the heads after the first start up and not let my Pal strip the head off so hastily - but it's off. So when I put it all back together should I put the Copper head gasket back on dry or use a sealant such as Hylomar (do you have that in the US?) or perhaps Drei Bond as I shall have to buy a new tube of that for the base joint face.

thats a Copper habit

I'd use a high heat rubber sealer or a undrying other type................

a solid copper over the materal and steel BMW used...............THINK man THINK

We had copperheads where I grew up, but I never saw one with gaskets.

Well, that would demonstrate the need, wouldn't it?

Sad to think of all those poor copperheads roaming around in your youth, all without gaskets...

I remember when I had my old Triumph, which used copper head gaskets. If I remember rightly, the procedure was to heat the head gasket to cherry red and then anneal it in motor oil and let it cool prior to use.

twist wrote:I remember when I had my old Triumph, which used copper head gaskets. If I remember rightly, the procedure was to heat the head gasket to cherry red and then anneal it in motor oil and let it cool prior to use.

Actually, the heating is the annealing process. The cooling process doesn't matter - unlike carbon steel, where slow cooling anneals while quick cooling hardens. So, while the oil dipping may have had some positive effect on the surface of the metal, you could cool it in water or just slowly air cool, and it would still be annealed.

Any Copper head gaskets that I have seen for an airhead must be annealed to be installed–
squeaky clean surfaces all around AND sealed – I would rec a Hylomar spray.

Locktite 601 was the factory recommendation on late model Triomph/BSAs .

Seems to have worked OK on my B44.

I think the torque to properly seat a copper gasket would be greater than that to seat the composite OEM gasket.
Which might lead to stripping the case threads...No one has EVER done that, have they? (LOL)