Hey all, I have the 3.1l and I blew the head gasket testing maximum boost. It shot to 19 psi the blew up in a big cloud of smoke, still starts and runs as if nothings wrong but the exhaust shoots out think black smoke. Im assuming that the heads are fine, just need a gasket change. Do I really need to get the heads serviced? I have seen someone on another car pull a head off, changed the gasket and put the head back on and it was fine. That should work for me right?

Should be depending on if there is any damage to them. Whe you take it off, clean it up and run at least a indicator across it to see, if you are within .006" in 6", you are in factory tolerance.

all i have to say is don't go an get the most expensive gaskets get cheap ones so if there is too much boost they break again because that saves you from even more trouble.

why are u trying to go for max boost?
last week or whatever u said u didnt even have the 3 bar map and the thing isnt even tuned.

if u keep pushing the thing ur not gonna have a motor left. take ur time with it start at 5 psi and work ur way up 2-3 psi at a time as u tune it

u dont need anything specialy for gaskets in the motor either, im runing some vr headgaskets and as of today sucsesfully held up to 28psi of boost with arp head studs

28psi, was that w/ alky injection? any news on how it ran?

nothing really to report and i dont want to clog up his thread but yes it was with alky,and very limited ign timing.

it always ended up with tire smoke and the car headed sideways. needless to say i had a huge smile on my face afterwards. im still going over my datalogs to tune it

I wasn't aiming to stay with the maximum boost, I was in th emiddle of trying to find all if any leaks in the vacuum and exhaust. The engine was very loud in the bay, I wasn't betting alot of vacuum for the brakes, and I heard an air leak somewhere, atleast I thought it was. So I iliminated some hosing and bypassed the external wastegate to see if it was quieter and the vacuum leak was gone, at the same time I just wanted to see what kinda boost I could do at the time. My bad.

Well that hole in the #6 piston would have made it so the new head gasket wouldn't have sealed, regardless of the head surface

anothe rperson with a blown motor ?????

Not anymore. We pulled the 3.1 and put a 355 in it's place, going with twin's (this time it will get tuned)