Rooney

Hold the presses, it's game over here. turns out there is a crack, at exhaust valve and port for cylinder two, and to the edge of the firing ring. It's done for. Not sure how I missed that before, took it up to show a couple old colleagues at the parts store. I don't recall seeing it before, and wondering if I might have caused it over the weekend? But I'll still try to get the photos, maybe even video if it will load. The truck, gonna pack up the parts in the boxes and send it back to rockauto, and call the salvage yard in town for the engine I saw before. The bimmer? I'll deal with that later too, and might return here fore that. Won't surprise me at all if it comes off warped too, if I ever have to deal with it later for a valve job or something

92. And the truck? Also a 92. What am I doing on this forum if I have a bmw (still running) and Ford (in a coma and surgery now) if you might ask? Cuz y'all were the only ones on the internet I could find that were discussing this idea at all

Datsun cracklin! Nah, this is a fried Ford. Might have to deal with this on the 535i eventually, it's a slant 6 but perhaps aluminum will be easier to do this on... and easier to foul up ?

Got another idea, might not be possible for a head in particular with the intake and exhaust ports on the same side, i do have the spark plug holes on the opposite side, so maybe? Idea: with some sturdy bolts on both sides of the head, and some arrangement of mounting brackets down the length of the head, and making some sort of bracing apparatus to place over the head that still allows access to torque the head bolts themselves, connect the side brackets with the upper apparatus by a series of tensioners or slide adjusters, similar to bolt tensioners or like tie-rod sleeves, and adjust it until the head is completely flat and passes a straight edge & feeler check... then mount the head and gasket to the block with it stretched even, torque the bolts in sequence while this way avoiding the slippage and damage to the new gasket, when everything is torqued in place, remove the apparatus and proceed with reassembly as normal? Could that work?

Sacre bleu! 200 mm, that's 8 inch in English. I may work at an oil refinery that has a scrap heap of old components, but I'm not sure I can manage to get a hold of something like that. Perhaps a local metal recylclery?

I'll try to get pics uploaded after work. Phone won't let me. Used Delvac 1640, but for how bad it stunk I'd rather have used peanut oil! This GA boy stuck in KS would have felt right at home

(Edit: it was mark maras, madkaw, and eurodat that got me thinking it was possible and helped inspire the methods i used. I wanted to refer to their previous comments but had to go back to find their names, thanks each of ya. It's the only reason I made an account here, just to thank you.) I just did a bit different approach to the similar problem, not with an opel but I have a Ford truck with a head gasket failure, and found it warped about .033 up in the center. I didn't have a thick plate of steel to bolt onto, but found a girder and hoped to make it work. The approach I took was much different, rather than air heating and cooling, I figured that oil heating would more effective to thoroughly heat everything through to temp, taking notes from the kitchen chefs, and also slowly cool it. Borrowing from old blacksmith forgings. So far it appears that the head is not nearly as crooked, wheras before you could stand back ten feet and eyeball it and see where it warped at. I used washers about .090 thick, heated the head, and bolted it to the cool c-beam, bastardizing a feeler gauge set to do some math and combine multiple shims to brace between the beam and head, stacked between each L-R row of head bolts: Began with .033 warp, with .090 washers at the corners, and from what someone said here I went half the distance past center? It was a long weekend, but I basically stacked the feeler shims in a combination equal to what distance was needed, increasing in the stack sizes towards either end, with the old head bolts, nuts and lock washers on the beam side And with an old metal oil drum cut in half, two old gasoline Coleman camp grills, a propane weedtorch, digital thermometeras well as industrial use temp needle gauge that is fitted in processing equipment, I basically deepfried the cylinder head. It had already been fried once! But this time, heated the head upside-down so the c-beam would be out of the oil, in an attempt to keep it from distorting as well, if I could manage to keep it somewhat cooler than the head and thus remain more rigid while subjecting the head to the heat, and also left the mounting bracket on the head so I could dip it in or pull it without reaching in. I also had several fire extinguishers on hand, and a forklift to lift or lower it. Currently, I'm looking at it, it looks like it may be straighter, but I'll admit I'm nervous to unbolt the thing. Even with the criss-cross outermost and working in, what if somehow I made it worse?