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Is your radiator water foamy like soap? Or are you
bothered because every now and then, you add water to your Saturn
radiator? Or are you suffering from rapid pressure buildup in your
cooling system, before the engine has warmed up? Well, that is just
three of the signs that you need a new Saturn head gasket or Saturn
cylinder head. Because those things sounds like you have a cracked
Saturn cylinder head or a blown Saturn head gasket.
The head gasket is one of the most important gaskets in an engine
because it has to seal all of the combustion chambers as well as the
coolant and oil passages between the head and the block. From the
moment head gaskets installed, it has to provide a leak-fee seal and
preserve that seal for the life of the engine. For that reason, the
design of the head gasket itself is equally important.
One of the numerous challenges for the engineer is to design a head
gasket that would seal the aluminum head to the cast iron block. Yes,
aluminum heads save weight yet when they get hot, they expand 1.7 times
faster than cast iron. This difference in expansion rates produces a
lot of motion and scrubbing between the head and the block. If the head
gasket can’t withstand this motion and is not strong enough to handle
the shearing forces that happen every time the engine is started, run
and allowed to cool back down, it will leak in the long run.
Nowadays, vehicles used graphite head gaskets because graphite has
natural lubricity that can handle the differences in expansion between
the aluminum heads and cast iron blocks. Graphite consists of a soft
material which provides good conformability for cold sealing the engine
and graphite can withstand high temperatures and draw heat away from
hot spots to decrease thermal stress and loading.
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