So here's one for the books. Just wanted to know if anyone here has ever seen this before.

I sent my heads off to get ported. My friend and fellow engine builder, who actually does it for a living, sent my heads and his friends heads off together. His friends heads came back first and since I was wanting to take a trip soon he gave me his friends heads since his friend was not in a hurry. Well since that day I have been fighting intake leaks. I've tried every style of seal and even fabricated my own design using two o-rings yet nothing would seal or stay sealed for very long.

Many years ago I had bought a Ram Jett intake for an evo engine. It's a solid intake that was cast with the two hole flanges for the heads and carb. I decided to bolt it to the rear head and see if it aligned with the front heads sealing surface. Well I found that I had a .014" gap on the right side and .001" on the left.
I also put a straight edge on the boss for the air cleaner mount for the front head and I had a .030" gap at the rear head. So I've come to the conclusion that the dowel holes on the front head are in the wrong place and are rotating the head counter clockwise just enough to keep my intake from sealing.

At this point I'm considering dynamite between the cylinders!

But since I don't have any I guess I will try to fix it. I'm thinking of making some offset dowels roughly .005" that will rotate it back where it belongs. Has anybody else ever seen this before and if so how was it fixed?

 

Machining fault i would go for.

 

"Old school" was to loosen the heads, install the intake, then retorque the heads.

 

You're both right and you made me realize I didn't even say what engine I had. My apologies! It's a 2002 twin cam. On my old 91 FLHS I had a 3/8" hole in the cylinder and a 1/4" pin in the cases. I used that old Ram Jett to align it as I torqued down the heads. On the twin cam the dowels are a nice fit, just in the wrong place! I tried to rotate the head when I initially built the engine but I couldn't get enough. I was hoping the intake surface was ok even though the air cleaner mount was off. Obviously not.

 

Well I yanked the head yesterday and took out the dowels. I put them in a 4 jaw chuck and indicated them in offset at .010". I took a .005" cut off the radius and put them in the cylinders and installed the head. It brought the misalignment down quite a bit but still not correct. Today I'll make some new dowels with a .015" offset and see if that dials it in. I also noticed the air cleaner mounting bosses were almost lined up too so it's coming in.

 

I don't think I have ever heard of a similar situation, ever; very interesting but strange don't you think? Trying to visualize what you are doing but have a couple of questions. How is that offset thing going to work with the head gasket? What about the O-rings at the return dowels, assuming you are still using them but maybe not? Do you have any pictures; I am very curious about the problem and the fix...........

 

I'm having a very difficult time believing that there isn't something else going on here...

 

Something is amiss!

 

Ya think! I was trying to pull some more information out of the OP in #6. Pretty dramatic fix to machine offset dowels. Pretty sure the heads did not come off a cylinder with offset dowels but, hey, maybe we can see some pictures that will explain this very strange situation......

 

hmmmn,something weird going on.does it look like the port face (where the flange goes on has ben machined??)im wondering if the porting tool slipped,cutting the where the seal would go & the head was machined to clean it up.ide REALLY look into everthing before I started making offset dowls,as said earlier,it didn't go out like that