Thread: Surprize teardown

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A good friend gave me a "Thunderbolt" 283 that had been in a '65 Studebaker and while tearing it down, discovered NO gasket under one of the heads! No wonder he said it wasn't running right, all those years ago. Also found three of the piston rods had their number stampings facing the other way and one, chewed-up lifter.
I'm going to take most of it to the machine shop in hopes the block will pass a magnaflux. I don't see any scoring on the cylinder walls, but can't imagine how someone could go to the trouble of rebuilding this and then leave the head gasket off! Must have had great compression on that side!

Maybe they were using that "rebuild in a can" stuff?!?!? LOL.

There are foreign and other engines that don't use head gaskets and we didn't use any on our Donovan 417 -------

There was a car maker in the early days.. maybe the 20s
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Went out of business in part due to machining costs. They machined the surfaces to such tolerances that NO GASKETS were used in the engine.

Man, I'd love to see one of those.

Duetz tractors, with air cooled diesel engines, do not use head gaskets. They are made in Germany. At least they were made that way in the eighties, I'm not sure about today.

I overhauled a Duetz years ago and it was a goofy engine, but I can't remember if it had head gaskets or not.

I seem to remember hearing that Rolls Royce didn't use gaskets in the early days.
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