Hi All-

During the engine teardown of my '73 2.0, I discovered that both heads are cracked around one of the valve guides. I'm guessing that a PO replaced the guides at some point, and cracked the head when pressing the replacement guides in.

I'm looking at a couple of options and wanted to get the sage advice of the experts here on them:

1) Autoatlanta has remanufactured bare 2.0 heads that the vendor apparently builds/machines out of 1.8L or VW Bug heads for a less-than-outrageous price. Has anyone had good or bad experiences going this route?

Link


2) I think I can have a local shop weld the cracks and machine it back to size, but I'm not sure how well this would work, or what it would cost. Any advice?

3) The engine has apparently run for years (decades?) with the cracks, and they seem to be in a low-stress area. I'm guessing that the cracks were created when pressing in new valve guides and are not stress cracks from engine wear. Could I just leave them alone, or seal them with a high-temp sealant?

Thanks for the help.


Click to view attachment

Len at Hoffman Auto Machine is also using the AA 2.0L castings and rebuilding those to quality spec. I just installed a set and very nice.

I had the coatings done too

That's what I did. And they are very reasonably priced, IMO. Very happy with Len's work and service.

I have a set of rebuilt 2.0 heads for a "reasonable" price. PM or email if interested. Mark@MarkEpstein.net
@Not_a_six

Thanks for the lead. I sent an email to them.

Message sent. Thanks!