Hitchcocks Forum

Hi all. My 59 Connie spat out a spark plug complete with helicoil last week,but that is in hand. My question this time is can anyone recommend a repair company for my poor Ariel VB600 single alloy head which has been skimmed to death and will no longer seal properly. It is side valve so quite simple structurally. Two gaskets is a bodge too far, but maybe an alloy duplicate of the head gasket could be formed, welded to the head then skimmed back. What do you think. REgards. Dez

A mate had a similar problem with his B40 head. As I recall, they turned a bit off the barrel spigot and had a thicker copper head gasket made.

If you can find an aluminium casters in your area, they can use the old head as a pattern and make an allowance for leaving more "meat" on it where needed.
(It would not be as expensive as most people think.)

Dezzy, this is a well known phenomenon in car racing, heads are over skimmed but so much other work has been done to them that to save money they need to be repaired. In the car world there are firms that will make a suitable alloy spacer known as a 'head-saver'. One such is Ferriday Engineering, http://www.ferriday.co.uk/ run by the very helpful Mike Tanski. I have had just such a head saver made to reclaim a skimmed Mk1 Interceptor head and it has done thousands of trouble free miles. Call him and he will explain the process, really very simple to do!

REgards, Mark