I bought this 06 636 head from ebay, said was a perfect running motor. What do you think caused all the carmel colored buildup on the head? Is that oil? Maybe from bad rings? Did it blow a head gasket? Think I'll be able to clean it up and stick it on my motor?

 

i would guess that its oil and crap that was in the gasket, seems pretty clean to me just get all that stuff off, grab a new gasket and it should be primo

 

It was all dried on there, so that's what initially concerned me. I think it was stored for a while in a shallow puddle of gasoline. Seems like it was all gas varnish, and cleaned up rather easily. Pretty clean under it all, but I'm gonna have to work at getting it out of the water passages. Maybe dunk it in a stronger solvent cleaner or something like that...

 

if i was you i would check a few things before i even messed with it, most of the time you can eyeball it and see that the valves are straight and close up but you can set the head up like you got but tilt it some and put a bigpan or something under it and run antifreeze through the water jackets and if it seeps through were the valves are closed then you know if any are slighty wacked. also since it could have possible came off a blown motor youd want to check for straightness on the head gasket. you can take a flat ruler or something similar and lightly drag it accross the mouting surface and you can see if theres any high or low spots, which can cause LOTS of issues, including head gasket leaks!! a machine shop will do all this for you and it should be really cheap, and youd have a peace of mind that it s a good part.

 

+1

way better advice than mine haha

 

yeah have a shop check it for flatness, its probably fine but you don't want to put it all together to find out later.

 

Most machine shops will do it for cheap. When ever i pull a head off i always send it off to get machined and flow checked. Better safe than sorry.

 

The combustion chamber tops look really clean except for the bottom gasket surface area. If the top camshaft area looks good and clean (new like) just clean it up good and have it checked for flatness at the gasket surface and use it. Looks really clean to me; low miles.

 

set a piece of glass on it to see how straight it is. we do this on banshee heads to see if there warped.