All the work was done by a excellent mechanic,,,im sure he would have caught a bad gasket....He is tryn to get me back on the road at a good price but you can see on the cylinder wall a score mark...Im going to go with a 330 kit or say f##k it and put it back to a 250 sell it and buy a bigger bike still thinking but the amount of money this upgrade is costing and the down time is not worth the hassel...

 

" better is often the enemy of good enough"

wB

 

Dang! Ain't that the truth. Can I use that one?

 

I am sorry but a leaking head gasket would not score your cylinder.
something was not done correctly if you have a scored cylinder.

 

On my install I used ample supply of mating goop, selected at the NAPA dealer for the application. With goop & proper torquing, the thing should not leak.
I agree, for the amount of time you ran the bike, excess water in the cylinder, should not have scored it unless you were running it at max power and max temp. If you were following breakin procedures, the cylinder would never get that hot.

 

We've used that saying in surgery for decades...so, go ahead and use it!

 

Honestly, Bill Blue has done several hundred 351 kits now and I have only ever heard of 2-3 failing. I think two of those were "installer" errors.

I have 3000 hard miles on mine and it runs fantastic. I know of several other members here who have upwards of 15,000 miles on their 351's with them still going strong.

I have also installed a temp gauge on mine and honestly ripping up the mountain pegged in 3rd and 4th gear while 95 degrees out and the bike runs cooler than my car does.

 

[QUOTE=klx4me;480717 I wonder what reliability would be like such as in racing when constant wide open throttle is the norm?[/QUOTE]

First off, it isn't a racing bike. That said, I don't hesitate to run mine wide open whenever I like, as long as I like, as hot as the temperature may be.

 

I have never heard of coolant scoring the cylinder walls. If you got any amount of coolant into the cylinder you would know. Liquids dont compress, they tent to just bend the connecting rod. Unless the leak was a drip here and there. Sounds fishy to me.

 

Ive got a couple thousand kms on mine and have run it hard in hot moab temps wide open for a long time and didnt have any overheating.My fan came on at the same time as my buddies drz, so the wet sleeve thing isnt something to worry to much about me thinks.