Dear V-8 Buick owners who hate leaks, My trusty wagon had developed some small leaks in the cylinder heads, so I called Mike Tomaszewski at TA-Performance to get some advice on how to seal them. In the end, he suggested first trying some high-temperature silicone sealant and that was good enough to plug the leaks. However, Mike mentioned a more comprehensive procedure to seal cylinder heads that I wasn't aware of: Vacuum Casting Impregnation. Like so many other things, here is an article on Wikipedia that describes how this is done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porosity_sealing Quoting from the Wikipedia article: Porosity sealing is a four-step process: Air within the pores is expanded under reduced pressure (vacuum). Pressure reversal (adding pressure outside the part) saturates pores with monomer. Excess monomer is rinsed from the exterior surfaces of the part. The liquid monomer within the porosity is polymerized into a solid to seal the passage. According to Mike, the Federal government requires all Aluminum heads to be impregnated before being used in government applications. Mike has an outfit in Phoenix that can impregnate heads and he has even had success sealing up some cast iron nailhead heads. So if you were like me and didn't know about this process, here is another option to get heads to stop leaking short of replacing them. To learn more, get in touch with Mike at TA-Performance: http://www.taperformance.com/ Cheers, Edouard
Have you tried a pack or 2 of GM seal tabs? We used to crush them up in every service replacement engine and supposedly they came standard in all GM cars, or at least they did back in the 90's I had a very slight drip at a freeze plug on my TA STG1 SE heads and they did the trick for me.
Silicone did the trick (Re: Sealing cylinder heads) Dear Ken and V-8 Buick owners who hate leaks. Thanks for the suggestion, but a bit of high temperature silicone was all that was needed. The heads aren't leaking anymore. I wrote up the Vacuum Casting Inpregnation in case anybody else had a more serious head leak problem. Mike mentioned it as a "Plan-B" which might be the only option for more severe head leaks. The other thing I needed was a beefier fuel pump block of plate that I found on eBay. I'll try to write that up - when I have some time! Thanks again, Edouard
I worked for a large volume rebuilder that dealt with fleet, heavy duty, industrial, and rare/irreplaceable. We also created some new heads. We had a proprietary process that was easy to do and 100% effective, as was needed with our willingness to warrant repairs out to include affected components beyond our original work. I'm not going to tell you about that lol, but I will suggest that nearly any method you find on Google will work. Things like gas tank sealers, paint and compounds intended for other specific purposes probably won't work well, or last long. Good luck Googling.
