Cylinder Head Pitting

[NJBronk]

Whelp, the can of worms has officially been opened…

Rebuilt my carb after it was flooding, tried to set timing and air/fuel mix but couldn’t get idle RPM’s down - running lean…

Sprayed carb cleaner at back of intake and there’s a leak…

Took my intake off to swap gaskets, get everything cleaned up and notice some pitting around the four corner water jackets. I was planning to use RTV around the water jackets, but is this something I should be concerned about or can I just proceed as planned?

All four more or less look like this:

 

[blade]

Should be fine. It doesn't look like it crosses over to the intake runner. If you put the gasket up against the head the pitted area most likely matches the outline of the gasket.

 

[NJBronk]

Should be fine. It doesn't look like it crosses over to the intake runner. If you put the gasket up against the head the pitted area most likely matches the outline of the gasket.

Awesome, thanks. I don’t want to go any deeper into this engine right now…

The rest of the surfaces cleaned up pretty well. Intake is taking a bath in degreaser while I wait for parts and then fingers crossed I can get it back on with no leaks…

 

[Broncobowsher]

The 040 stamped on the china wall by the distributor is not factory. That is probably the size of the overbore.
The numbers on the back look like a work order number, year, and month. Could be wrong.

As for the pitting, as mentioned, compare against an intake gasket. The ports on these old engines are far from a perfect alignment. I'm going to say that the pitting is not on a critical sealing surface, non-issue. Just a sign that the coolant had been neglected at one point in the engines life, either current or more likely the prior life before the rebuild.

 

[spap]

I was going to ask about the 040 also,

 

[NJBronk]

I was going to ask about the 040 also,

I know the truck was painted under prior ownership in 2014 during a refurbishment, and that the engine was overhauled. I assumed it would have been around the same time, but 2016 would make sense as well as it was during that same owner's tenure.

I wish I knew more about the engine but the PO I bought it from was between that PO and me. It has long-tube headers, Weiand 8011 intake (not a performance model) and 600 CFM Holley carb. Besides the current vacuum leak the engine seemed to run pretty well but definitely not a high-powered unit. I will likely do a compression test after I get it all back together (should have done it before, but I'm not having the engine rebuilt anytime soon either way...). Hoping to get a lot of years out of this powerplant without anything major...