At 04:25 PM 4/22/2010, Scott Daniel - Turbovans wrote:
>and the heads are not held down by a lot of force, just 8 studs per head,
>with nuts torqued to 37 ft lbs.

But if you take into account the very small area of the sealing rings
compared to the area of an I-4 head gasket, you'll see there is lots
of pressure (psi) on those rings.  For comparison (for the older
amongst us) an elliptical needle tracking at two grams on an LP
(vinyl) record exerts something like 150,000 psi on the record at the
points where it touches.

Yrs,
D