In article .com,
"andy" wrote:

Hi folks.
I am trying to replace the head gasket on an old marine gasoline
engine. (Palmer PW-27) The old gasket (which i made of unspecified
gasket material I had on hand) has blown out between the combustion
chamber and one of the head bolts after approximately 10 hours of use.

The engine is a one cylinder, 8ish HP, flat head-type, raw water cooled
engine, which I have been told has some internal parts made by
Wisconsin.

I have been unable to locate a factory gasket, and plan on making one.
Any suggestions for a suitable material would be helpful.

One thought I had was to try to incorporate a piece of flattened copper
wire around the perimeter of the combustion chamber with some gasket
material sealing up around the bolt holes and coolant passages. Any one
have any luck with this "hybrid" approach?

Well, Idunno as I'd be super-trusting of the concept on a marine engine,
but I used to fix blown head gaskets on lawn mowers with a box of Cap'n
Crunch, rubber cement, and a piece of a roll of Reynold's Wrap tinfoil,
and for the big ones (10HP and up), a suitable length of copper wire
pulled out of 12/3 ROMEX cable and stripped.

Cut down the box to give you two chunks a bit larger than the head,
rubber-cement them together with the "cap'n artwork" to the inside, coat
the flats on both sides with rubber cement, wrap smoothly in tinfoil,
lay it on the top of the cylinder (was usually more stable than trying
to do it on the head) and use a ball-pien hammer to cut the gasket. Once
cut out, I'd rubber-cement the tinfoil and re-wrap with more tinfoil to
put metal over the cardboard edge anywher it's likely to encounter
"fire". Once done with that, for the big guys, I'd rubber-cement the
wire in place around the openings as needed, lapping the ends tightly
over each other, and then torque it down. For the smaller ones, the
tinfoil wrap was all that was needed.

Never had one needing a new head gasket afterwards (had reports of more
than a couple of them where the deck rusted away with the engine still
in "runs good" condition, though) so it must have worked fairly well

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