the crack is obvious. what do you think? i'm no expert by any means, but this doesn't seem to be in a high stress area. welded up and ground down, should be good to go.

yes? no? maybe??

if it was ok, how much money will it cost to have it back to original? compare that to how much is another head going to cost? which would give you better peace of mind?

Short answer Yes it can be repaired. However you cannot simply weld it up and grind it down. You have to grind out the crack to its ends in both directions. It will probably end up looking like it was hit with an artillery shell when you are done and then you start welding.
The head needs to be heated up (alot) while you are welding. This is not cheap or easy. I can see that someone spent a fair amount of time in the ports so getting anther head to match will also entail a good bit of work. Tough call....Todd

Being a iron head I would just replace it... yes anything
can be repaired but at what cost

We did lots of cast iron welding in the mill because we had to as a lot of our rolling mill parts were over 50 years old. Our best (longest lasting) repairs were ones we could drill both ends of the crack to keep it from going any further, grinding out the crack, heating the part, welding the part with a high nickle rod, and then slowly cooling the part. We would then peen the repair with a hammer and then grind as needed. There are some REAL GOOD rods available to do repairs like this. I have also tig welded cracks with stainless filler on heads and between cylinder bores on blocks with some success but that takes more time (and grinding). It probably won't be cheap to have repaired so make sure its worth while before searching for a shop that will take on the project.

Indy can fix it!

There use to be a cast iron welding shop in Concord, CA according to one of the local machine shop owners. Exceslweld or something similar in name. He says they closed up but any heavy duty Diesel repair shop should know of a good cast iron welding shop I've had heads worst than that repaired years ago by another H.D. dieselrepair shop in SO CA named Cyclone Excessweld so maybe there is a chain of Excesweld shops still They do grind the crap out of the head where the cracks are to get rid of the bad material and then weld them back up and rough machine them for you as part of the repair, I was told that they preheat the part in a oven for 24 hrs and then do a little bit of welding at a time until the repair is done and then take 24 more hours to let it cool down Good luck, let us know what you do and how it works out

the head belongs to a friend and is a max wedge head that has had some port work, as you can see.

he is contacting a shop that does this kind of repair, i believe someone on this board, don't know the name.

he will make a decision once he hears from him.

what about stitching method?

Yes, no problem imo.

if that's the only crack I would fix it.my shop uses rays cracked head repair in Seymour Indiana. we have had way worse cracks than that repaired.