Day after Christmas I was driving to work....long story short, car started overheating. Applied standard troubleshooting, few hours later pulled the heads off. Found the damage in the associated picture, kinda looks like Florida if you hack off the westernmost panhandle. That's a Nickel for reference. They have been sitting on my shelf in the garage since that day.
What do you think? Fixable? Can't capture the depth from the photo, but it's not too deep ...5-6 sheets of paper. Put the stock heads back on, runs fine...no problems. That little bugger was letting pressure in and making the coolant/water puke.
I'm geographically separated from the real world....I would never take these heads to a "machinist" in this town. Closest is either Lubbock or Amarillo, TX., and they're both about 100 miles away. Not a big deal to head to LBB or AMR....just time consuming.
Being around Racing, particularly aluminum head Sprint car and Nascar engines I have seen heads cracked in half and welded back together. Like I said, it just depends on what they are worth to you.
These aren't exotic, one-off pieces. In the end, I'll take them to a machine shop, see what they say. This is just a feeler, there are some good opinions out there....
I'm not even sure you can call this a crack....more like flaking, if that's even metal fatigue terminology....
I might spend 2-300 hundred at a machine shop if they deem this repairable...other than that, these can become beer cans.....