Thanks guys. I'm hoping it'll just be the seals not bedded properly, that'd be nice and cheap!

Also make sure that it's not a leak from the oil feed at the front of the head - these have a habit of blowing oil all over the place and can end up on the tubes - can usually tell quickly if it's that as bottom of the rubber cowling will be oiled up.....

I had a head with some corrosion damage on a push rod tube. I used J-B Weld, in 2011. Seems to work well, all though the engine has not been much used.





J-B Weld -> http://www.jbweld.com/collections/epoxy-adhesives/products/j-b-weld-twin-tube

Popped into the garage today and they said they tried pressure testing the tubes and they seemed fine, so they remounted the head paying particular care to the pushrod seals, using Vaseline, and they think it's ok now, no leaks so far. They wanted another afternoon to make sure. Yay, excited to get it back and new able to drive with the heater on! (Fumes before, so bad...)

In other news, my timing was well out apparently. So i won't be using that guy again..

Its running great, but still fumes in the cabin as on the other the other side the manifold just wont seem to seat right, so still a bit of an exhaust blow there. I'm going to get another manifold as this one never did sit completely flat, which is probably the cause of all this jiggery pokery in the first place.

Thanks to all for the suggestions!

Fitting the spider can be a right royal pain in the arse to fit properly - it is almost impossible to get to sit flat if you have put the heads back on and torqued them up - you need to keep them slack then put the spider on and align it up and make sure the gaskets are properly in place - use of the high temperature gaskets from ECAS certainly helps keeping things gas tight. Are you sure it's leaking around the gaskets and not a wasted seat on the cylinder head? If you get blackening around the gasket then bingo that will be that.....but otherwise.....

Oh really? I guess mines normal then. Yeah I bought the carbon gaskets from Roy at Ecas. It's definitely blowing a little from that one side at the manifold.

I'm getting some copper gaskets to try, maybe it just needs a little jiggling around.

copper being less compressable than the faux-asbestos will highlight your problem rather than alleviate it. Follow the assembly advice on other thread and i smother the cheap gasgets in copper grease - never had a blow out.

Thanks Sean.

Normally they torque the heads to 1 mkg then fit the manifold and after that retorque to 2mkg.
There could also be a leak between head and barrel. Grinding with valve grindig paste will solve that.