Anneal C/H gasket

[pjm01]

Plan to remove the cylinder head on my '59 A7 Shooting Star (to investigate suspect valve guide issues). Shall use a new solid copper cylinder head gasket when fitting all back together which I shall anneal as all postings suggest ..... however ..... is it best to quench the heated gasket in water or oil ??? I seem to remember from my school metalwork days that quenching in water can make some materials brittle ...... or perhaps my memory has failed again. Many thanks    Peter M

[bsa-bill]

Quenching can make some metals brittle if cooled too fast, from comments on this forum it seem copper remains soft no matter whether you quench it or not, so just let it cool on its own good time, truth to tell I just bung a new gasket (solid copper) on with a smear of grease without annealing and have never had a problem, maybe depends on your head and barrels, you'd probable feel better if you did anneal it tho

[RichardL]

Peter,

Funny this comes up today. Just this morning I did a crude annealing of my head gasket. Having no furnace or oxy-acetylene, my method is to throw it on the hottest burner on my kitchen stove (a pretty big burner) then add the effects of one propane torch working it at the same time until all areas have had the opportunity to glow cherry red. Then, I let it air cool, even though, with copper it doesn't really matter. I know one or two materials engineers here who are going to tell us that raising to temperature and keeping it there for a while does a better job. You could say I've taken the "plausible deniability" approach. That is, no one can say I didn't do it.

For laughs, I have another method shown in a YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOul-aIO_lg .Sharing this, no one can say I'm afraid of opening myself up to ridicule.


Richard L.

[Greybeard]

The cold water quench cleans a lot of the carbon deposit left from the heating.

[pjm01]

Many thanks for all your responses ..... still not quite sure what to do ...... perhaps it's simply not critical. Weather seems to be picking up so 'ride out the season' and leave the problems (real or imiginary) to next Winter. Peter M