There I was, cruisin' happily in the 14er down the interstate. Looked down at the cylinder head temp gauge and saw it was creeping up to the 500 mark. Thought it was the gauge since the oil temp hadn't even reached the "T" and pressure was steady at 60. Decided to head home anyway - and about a mile from my house I went on three cylinders. Pulled it into the garage and started to check plugs. When I got to number 3, the side electrode was bent over to touch the middle and the edge of the plug looked like someone had taken a ballpein hammer to it. Put a magnet down the spark plug hole and it came out kinda fuzzy. Put the jackstands under it and loosened up the head so I could see inside. Inside of the head looked like Noriega's cheeks. Melted aluminum all over the place. Went inside and had 4 stiff drinks. Placed a WTB ad in the Club classifieds for new heads.



Moral: Thou shalt always watch thy gauges so that truth and beauty will be yours forever.

Jake, PUHLEEES get your DTM system worked out for us 14ers so we can enjoy cool heads as well as curvy roads.

bummer....

you need to find out why this happened in the first place...a motor could still melt with the DTM

I agree, you have a bigger problem than what you think. The melting point for aluminum is 1220 degrees. No DTM is going to help you will that. Something else is wrong and I would suggest you find it before you do it again.

Don't recall your engine configuration. FI, CARBS, Some sorta EFI
But what ever the fuel delivery system you got it ain't working in that cylinder. half Plugged injector. or carb jet.

Oh the number of times I've thought "no, that info is faulty" and had it bite me too. Thats a shame. Seems like you musta gone WAY lean on that cylinder or the timing has been too high- at least on that cylinder. Did the spark plug melt into that shape you think? Do you have high compression- like really high compression? Where did the guage sender sit relative to the cylinder that had the melt down? More than one? So what kinda ignition, fuel delivery, etc....

Just a bone stock 2 litre with D-jet. Was saving up for a Raby engine, but I guess that's going to be put on hold for a while.

The amazing thing was that when I checked the compression, I still got 90 psi (of course, it was 135 before).

Yeah, I figured that I had to have some sort of incredibly lean condition for it to heat up that much.

Think I'll have another drink.

Gauge sender was on number 3 and it was pegged when I got home. Don't think it was timing, since I checked it about a month ago when I put the Pertronix in, and it idled and went up through the gears just fine.

Maybe I'll make 2 drinks.