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Can anyone recommend a shop that would be capable of duplicating a 216 stovebolt head gasket in soft copper sheet metal, maybe about 1/16" thick? I'm in the process of building a Frankenstein "216" that's probably going to have around 9:1 compression or more, and it won't surprise me if an OEM head gasket won't handle the pressure. On the supercharged tractor pull engines I used to build, we used a solid copper head gasket with a stainless steel "fire ring" fitted into a shallow groove machined into the block that imbedded itself into the copper. I'm thinking I'll need to do something similar, and use Grade 8 studs instead of head bolts to hold the head on. The oddball combustion chamber shape of the stovebolt head probably won't allow the fire ring to be used, but the solid head gasket will probably be stronger than original. Thanks in advance!
Jerry

Waterjet or laser might be better. Generating the profile will require a new OEM gasket to get the exact coordinates. A scanning type CMM would probably be ideal for that. Unfortunately, I don't have a waterjet, laser or scanning CMM and the other shops I deal with don't want to mess with automotive work.

If you find a shop, making a half a dozen or more will be more cost effective. Could possibly stack them and cut them all at once. Just my thoughts, hopefully others (more informed) will chime in.

John

I've used sendcutsend.com a few times for different things if you can build a CAD file. Very fast turnaround at reasonable prices.

When one of the online parts vendors was having a "closeout" sale, I bought about six 216 head gaskets, the expensive copper sandwich type, for a ridiculously low price. I'm sure one of them could serve as a pattern guide for programming a CNC machine of some sort. Good idea about stacking the raw material in layers and cutting several at once!
Jerry

Race gaskets? Not a fountain of information here. Nor pictures.

More copper?

Thanks, Mark- - - -I'm going to guess that the Race Gasket product is for a 250/292 engine, and the other place is selling the composite copper/graphite gaskets like I've already got. There's a couple of places that advertise water jet cutting on Ebay- - - -I've gotten donut-shaped steel lathe stock 1" thick from one of them for a project I was doing. It might be worth my time to see if he could duplicate a stack of stovebolt head gaskets in solid copper.
Jerry

I am in the process of rearranging my shop and setting up my CNC mill. Give me a few weeks to get it set up and trammed and if you have not found a solution yet I can set you up.

I would need one to digitize. If you are cool with it, I would share that file with other people that want it.

PM a snail mail address, and I can send you a new gasket to use as a reference. Once you have a program written, you're welcome to use it or share it in any way you choose. At this point in my life, I have zero interest in keeping anything to myself that could help someone else. I've got more projects in progress and ideas for more than I'll ever live to complete.
Jerry

PM sent. Do you have a specific grade of soft copper in mind for these?

The "gaskets" we used on the truck pull MOPAR hemi engines were very soft, so the fire ring wire could imbed into the surface easily. I think some type of "annealed" soft copper would be suitable, as it needs to compress and deform slightly as the head is torqued to seal well and accommodate minor blemishes or less than perfectly flat head and block surfaces. A brush-on sealer like Permatex Super 300 would need to be used to seal coolant- - - -water is MUCH more difficult to seal than compression. Some of the puller engines only had coolant in the aluminum heads- - - -the block cooling passages were filled with hard epoxy material to brace the flanged sleeves we ran. One 547 cubic inch "426" engine I built had the original cylinder walls bored completely through in places- - - - there were stripes of epoxy showing before we installed the sleeves!
Jerry

Cool project. Would you just manually place the fire rings atop the copper gasket? Or how would that work, exactly?

We made the fire rings from .032" diameter stainless steel aircraft safety wire. A groove was cut into the top of the block 1/8" or so outside the cylinder bore, with a depth half the diameter of the wire. Then a length of wire was cut so the ends would butt together tightly as it was tapped into the groove. The wire that protruded above the surface of the block would imbed itself into the copper, and provide a pretty effective compression/combustion seal. Since the engines only ran for a few minutes max before getting torn down and freshened up, the butt joint in the ring wasn't an issue. Sometimes those $20K engines didn't survive a 300 foot pull!

Since the stovebolt combustion chamber has such an oddball shape, a fire ring won't be necessary, or even possible to do, IMHO.
Jerry

Some visual aid.

Back in the dark ages, (1960's) I can remember mail order places like J.C. Whitney and Warshawsky (same company) selling "high compression" head gaskets- - - -.030" thick solid copper gaskets that were supposed to give all sorts of performance gains over the thicker composite gaskets that were in common use by rebuilders. Of course, they offered no advantage at all over the .023" thick embossed steel shim head gaskets that most manufacturers used as original equipment.
Jerry