A friend of mine have an issue with aluminium 
cylinder heads.
A dammage/crack noticed between the valve seats during inspection of parts during a leak seek. This cylinders spark plug look fine tough.
Any ideas what could cause this, repair and how close to the cooling water passages?
Best/Anders
Replies sorted oldest to newest
It's very common for small pieces of aluminum to fall out of the head casting between the valve seat inserts and usually doesn't mean anything.
It rarely means that the head is cracked.
Pressure test them. If the test shows that you have a leak then the seats need to come out and the crack welded up.
Aluminum welds and repairs well BUT the issue is when you go to press the new seats in. You need to freeze them first.
Probably they should be pressure tested again after the new seats are pressed in.
You can't reuse the old seats. You need to install new ones.
Those are probably going to be Chevy cast iron seats? Be thankful.
My aluminum 427 GT40 heads used stellite seats. Those no longer existed plus I don't know how you cut them anyway since they are harder then the stones.
Thank´s for your comments Panteradoug
