J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment New season, new projects

and deeper we go



until we finally have the cylinder head off.


Plenty of carbon on the valve heads and some fairly pitted metal on the forward cylinder portion of the cylinder head. Once I have the valve itself out I can see just how much steel has corroded away to the point where there is a crack across the valve seat!


Great, I'm definitely way over budget for this spring's projects already without buying a whole new cylinder head. And after browsing around the interweb for a few minutes I discover that I can't find one anywhere anyway, price notwithstanding. What to do? It was a long shot but I grabbed the mig from the garage and a dremel tool...


Shaping the weld bead by hand was some delicate business. Eventually the tolerances seemed close and I could finish by grinding the valve seat with the valve itself using lapping compound and this is what I ended up with.


Will it work? I'm not sure but I certainly hope so.