[Rich Biebel]

Stitch welding is the process referred to in an earlier post. Tapered pipe plugs are installed directly along the crack and they are installed one by one and overlapping one another. Been there, done that and it eventually leaked in a 400 Pontiac race engine. That was an outside crack and quite long and into a freeze plug. If it was an external crack you could vee it out with a grinder and fill it will epoxy and your chances of it not leaking are about as good as any other process. Welding cast iron really requires pre and post heat to get it to work as well as possible. Al Mathon in NY used to offer cast iron weld repairs on heads and maybe blocks as well. He guarenteed the repair would not leak. I had experience with his weld repaired heads.....they did not leak. Seats and guides had to be redone after the weld due to the pre and post heat he used to get the best weld quality. Usually after one of these repaired heads ran for a shor time they needed to have the seats redone. The heating process made them unstable. My buddie blew up a couple engines and had ported Turbos...Each blow up meant another head repair. I finally convinced him to ditch those heads and buy some new ones. I also had a 454 race engine that came in a car a buddie bought. I drove it for a while. The engin was built using a 427 '351 block.......the block that came in a mid 60's Corvette. It had aluminum rods in it and the guy that ground it for clearance gound to far and hit water. He epoxied the water jackets. It leaked the first time we ran the car. We pulled it apart and tried to get the epoxy out by oven baking the block...twice. It just made a big mess.....We tossed the block in the scrap pile. Those '351 blocks bring a lot of money in the collector world and it might have been worth trying to fix it but that was before they were paying silly money for collector cars......I still think welding, stitch welding and epoxy preairs on a race block is not a god idea....