With a blown head gasket and the first local test and tune of the year coming up we began searching high and low for someone in north ga that had a 4bt head gasket in stock. As you can imagine absolutely no one had one in stock or could get one within a day or two. As a last resort, we tried craigslist and to our surprise we found someone local who had a bunch of old stock 4bt parts. We quickly purchased a few head gaskets considering our chances of blowing one again in the near future. Once we were home the race was on to get the truck back together well enough to at least see what it could do at the track. An added benefit of blowing the head gasket was it gave us the excuse to do a port and polish. Because of the rush we only had time to do a quick port and polish. After getting the new head gasket Sunday evening and spending some late nights after work we were able to get the truck back together and running and re-torqued by wed night. Thursday, we tested lil Debbie out around the house and adjusted the AFC live so that we could keep the boost below 60. At the same time, we also got a “little” carried away and brought the timing up to 29 degrees. Friday night we ran the first pass pretty easy limiting boost to 50 psi which resulted in a low 17 sec pass. We then started to dial up the AFC live until on the 5th pass it was about 80 percent of full fuel. On this pass, we happened to be racing an Acura Integra and gapped him off the line but as fate or more accurately physics would have it, the Integra began to catch up mid track and instead of keeping the boost under 60 psi the competitive side took over and well the pedal stayed to the floor. Lil Debbie still had plenty left in her and ended up running right with the integra and doing a personal best with a 15.76 @86mph. After getting the truck back to the staging lanes it became apparent that once again the combination of high timing, high boost and stock head bolts and head gasket just wasn’t up to the task. Even with the blown head gasket we were still impressed with how much we could throw at the motor. Now after “playing” around as we had been and paying the piper we had two choices; take it back closer to stock or tear it down and build it from the bottom up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUCdd9Nkn44