I'm not going to drag readers through the long story. The short story is that I rebuilt (all mill work through a local machine shop) my 93 SR 6G72 a couple years back (now has about 12k miles on the rebuild) and for the 3rd time now it has blown a head gasket. Heads were resurfaced and rebuilt.

Along the way I remember forum members mentioning the possibility that the head bolts could be bottoming out before full torque is achieved (since some surface milling has occurred on the heads and the block. I checked for this (took measurements)on the 1st failure occurrence. The 2nd time I had the machine shop check it out and reinstall the heads (not sure therefore what they did). But, they are supposed to be reputable.

So, the question is what do I do now:
1) Give up on this engine and find another
2) Push it off a cliff
3) Try again

Guess if I try again I'm going to shorten the bolts a tad regardless of what my measurements show.

Any thoughts would be helpful?

I was just reading on-line about a "performance" head gasket out of an Austrailian company.

Permaseal BR600

Anyone tried these on their 6G72?

http://www.aagaskets.com.au/PDF/Mitsubishi%206G72%20Head%20Gaskets.pdf

Did your machine shop read the part about max 0.008 shaving?

It wasn't blue printed so I have no way of knowing.

You know, I read that in the FSM and wondered if that was a misprint. That sure isn't much.

It is not a misprint!