My thoughts exactly. These long style heads can leak more easily to begin with.. so, overheating them usually lifts and bows them out a bit as a result. Fresh flat cuts after overheating/gasket damage is almost gauranteed. And as baddad mentions above.. running low on coolant too many times causes long term/progressively increasing gasket damage.. or in more severe cases can cause cracking in locations that may not become evident in the cooling system or crankcase. Namely the exhaust ports themselves(they do get pretty hot) which causes slow drops in water levels as it pukes it out the exhaust pipe.. which of course makes the head gaskets job that much more difficult as the head moves around even more. Don't ask me how I know.. because it brings up too many bad memories. Heavily ported heads are even more susceptable to hairline exhaust port cracks too.
i agree with rayell on the first blown head gasket the head should have been surfaced to ensure a level mating surface on reassembly......ask me i know from experience lol
where do you live? if you live anywhere near sacramento CA I have a complete running 250I6 that came out of my boys car I would sell for $100 it has a new head gasket and 302 valve springs recent valve cover gasket oil pan gasket also if I remember right (took the head off to clean it up and repave the old factory inilne springs)
I'm in Pa. How does it run? Can I just drop it in and go? A new rebuilt 250 costs roughly $1,800 so I'm curious what it would cost to ship it
About a 100 years ago(OK approx 30) I pulled the head off the 250 in my '75 Granada and found cracks between the valves... While none were causing a leak they no doubt one day could have... Reason I pulled the head was a external leak between head and block, the cracks in the combustion chamber were totally unrelated to my problem... A compression leak that quickly pressurizes the cooling system is generally in the head or the head gasket... These don't usually allow large(as in noticeable) amount of coolant in the oil, though there can be exceptions... Since the gasket has been repl and nothing was obvious, I'd suspect a small crack or maybe badly warped head... Cracks in the block almost always allow coolant into the oil at a fairly substantial rate...
I don't see compression loss from the thicker Fel-Pro gasket as a issue, especially on a Lo-Po 6cyl... I used a Fel-Pro on the 250 I mentioned in the Granada and it ran from around 85K mi to almost 200K mi before a rod let go and holed the block... By then it wasn't my problem, ex had sold it to a guy I used to work with...
yes you can pretty much drop it in and go. you would need to put on your alternator and power steering pump and fan belt pulley. we used the fan pulley on the 302 we put in the boys car we originally wanted to race the I6 but parts are just TOO EXPENSIVE. I have a video of the motor running but cant seem to upload it here if you want to email me I can send you that video
