[DeTomaso] Bleeders on the heads... need advice before I cry

[JDeRyke at aol.com]

Agree completely with Michael F- a few flakes of iron inside the heads will 
not cause any trouble. I'm into this post late as we just returned from 2 
wks in Hawaii's big island- where we visited with BOTH the Pantera owners 
that live there!
On the bleeders- I wrote an article in the April '03 POCA News on sawing up 
a junk Cleveland head to see what was in there. The article shows what 
you're dealing with inside the castings and gives dimensions for drilling both 
heads- which are quite different both inside and out. For those with Aussie 
heads, the castibgs are much thicker than U.S heads but behave about the 
same. I also mentioned that Larry Stock was successfully running radiator 
bleeders on his do-everything Pantera's Aussie cylinder heads. 
For those who want to add more parts that do the same thing as radiator 
bleeders, brake bleeders will work but you need to add TWO parts to each head- 
a bleeder needle AND a seat; adding the needle alone will act as a fancy 
hose bib that never shuts off unless you are good enough with a 1/4" drill to 
cut an integral seat in the head while drilling. Pegasus Racing and others 
sell a repair brake bleeder that includes a separate needle & seat which will 
work. Finally, I heard of one guy that added AN hose connections that 
fastened to more AN fittings brazed to the surge tank- the idea being to 
continuously sweep trapped bubbles from the back end of the heads. This also would 
work as long as the hoses were relatively small so the normal cooling pattern 
isn't disrupted. FWIW- J Deryke