Does anyone have an old head gasket from a ZX14?

Preferably not blown to bits, but it obviously doesn't have to be in usable condition. I will of course paypal whatever the shipping cost + beer money for your trouble.

Thanks!

Jerminator96@yahoo.com

Head gasket or head cover gasket? If it's the head cover that is leaking (prolly left side), you may want to just try putting a washer or two under the bolt heads and torquing. That seems to have worked in the majority of cases where a new head cover gasket often starts to leak again anyway.

Hub,

You're a funny guy. I do not have a leaky ZX14, don't even have a ZX14. Hell, I haven't owned a bike in a couple of years...

I just need an old block surface to cylinder head mating gasket for some comparative measurements...anyone have one laying around?

No bike? Then why?

He's mighty secretive.

Just interested in the cylinder heads. They are a good design, light weight, compact, and they are capable of a lot of power. The only thing missing is another cylinder bank.

The Audi 3.7/4.2 V8 has the potential to solve that problem. It uses a fairly light weight aluminum block with 84.5mm bores on 90mm bore spacing, by far the closest to the Zx14 that I have found. There are still questions that arise about cooling, oiling, and bolt holes. The zx14 appears to have one irregularity in the head bolt pattern that might make adaptation difficult. Before I spend hundreds on a head or even $50 on a new gasket, I would like to compare the Audi to the kawasaki gasket.

As you can imagine I have the same post on an Audi forum and have been met with similar skepticism.

Yeah, I remember seeing that vid posted here. Was about 6 months ago, I think. The car with the 14 motor on the race track. I can't remember the name of the thread.

Hub,

Wrong again, this monster would never see the underside of an audi hood...too heavy. I thought about using it in my stripped down Miata, currently sitting under 1300lbs without a drivetrain, should be at 1900lbs with motor/trans/cage, etc...again, too heavy.

No, the time and money it takes to mount a set of heads to a block they were never intended to mount to warrants a dedicated mid-engine chassis. I'm looking for a race weight under 1500lbs.

I appreciate the heads up about the revised design, I will have to check both to see what works.

Now does anyone around here plan on pulling a motor apart soon? I know you guys don't take your bikes to a dealership...

Thanks Hub.

You think its hard to find a zx14 gasket, try finding the Audi gasket I need to compare it with...how many A8 owners do you see getting down and greasy with their engine? Damn yuppies...

Yeah I had looked at the parts diagrams for both, and it does look feasible, though the Audi is using an outdated design for their coolant passages, it is nothing I haven't had to do before (Mated a set of Nissan VH45 heads to a SBC, interesting to say the least).

I don't usually use factory anything except for castings. Someday I hope to be able to cast my own blocks and heads also. Most of it is pretty worthless when you are changing so much anyway, so I do my own tuned length intakes and exhausts based on Helmholz resonance tuning.

The factory intake length is not bad, though the throttles would be undersized for my application, and I could not reasonably turn a 93mm stroke motor to 9000+ RPM. With the 82.4mm stroke crank of the 3.7L version I could make peak power at 9200rpm, that would give me a mean piston speed of 83 fps, similar to the Honda S2000, but the heads would need some work to flow that kind of air.

We'll see, I have a lot of work before I need to figure that out.