Gasket Eliminator, Application Questions

In many instances you list the thickness of the gasket is important for the component. If the water pump impeller is in the correct position on many of the cars eliminating the gasket will allow impeller to housing contact. In the case of valve covers the valve cover is machined to THAT head and no other. If you leave out the gasket the holes at either end will no longer be round for correct sealing or fit of the cam seals, cam seal housings etc.

There is an old quote from "Boss" Kettering of GM engineering fame.
"Parts not required cost nothing and cause no service or warranty problems"
In other words if they went to the trouble and expense to make it and install it you should probably do likewise unless you have the engineering expertise to better their design.


518 is a great product and we use large quantities of it. We often use it on gaskets which it is quite useful for and of course on almost all of the gasketless joints on the cars.

 

Yeah same here, We go through tubes of the stuff on our Underground fleet at work so it's got to be top notch, It's saved me a many a time

 

None that I am aware of and the factory uses it as well and has issued no warnings. I have spoken to Permatex Corp who make Loctite about its use and they said nothing.

I do know from personal experience that it will not harden when it gets into the oiling system. That property is the reason Ferrari went to it's predecessor back in 87 or so.

 

I've just finished a belt change/valve adjust and balked at the $100 price tag for the cam cover gaskets. I've decided to cut my own from readily-available gasket material. The question is: what is the exact thickness of the factory gaskets? I only have the old ones, which are obviously crushed, so if someone out there has a new set and could mike them and post the results I would be eternally grateful.

 

We have manufacturers on this site that make turbo's, big bore kits, headers, exhausts, carbon fiber bits, etc...

Why doesn't someone scan the ferrari gaskets and make sets, for a reasonable price? This is probably fairly easy to do, and you would sell quite a few sets. Anyone up for it? Daniel/Ricambi? Etc?

Making a gasket is not difficult, but is precise work...sounds like easy money for someone...

 

What would be really nice would be neoprene or similar material reusable cam cover gaskets.

I remember reading somewhere about a gasket material that was a sandwich reinforced with a thin sheet of Al moldeded into the center. I'd pay a premium price for a reusable set & amortize the cost over 3 or 4 majors.

BTW,
The obvious place to use 518 on a 308 is to seal the sump & trans covers. Nice machined metal-metal flanges & w/o critical spacing. Have a project coming up & plan to try it there.

I've used 518 on 3x8 cam cover gaskets with good results. As with any sealant on the cam cover gaskets, It's very important to keep the coat very thin so the gasket ends aren't squeezed out of place.

 

Might work. 518 tends to stick things together somewhat firmly, usually takes a tap with a hard plastic hammer face to break the bond loose, so a shim might get bent up pretty badly on removal. Be worth trying tho.

Hmm, a metal shim could also be used with RTV gasket maker as long as it was used sparingly.

 

Just how often are you going to remove the valve covers? On cars with adjustable valves, every 15k miles. Even if you drive it 90k miles (95% of owners will never do that) you are doing 6 valve adjustments.

6 sets of VC gaskets, for that you want to tool up and make a bunch of parts to eliminate gaskets? For that amount of money and time something productive could actually be done.

Besides the method you are talking about would require gluing the VC on.

I have never glued one on. Do you know how long it would take to clean it all up to reassemble. No thanks, give me a couple of hundred dollars worth of gaskets. I have better things to do.

 

Brian,
Have been meaning to ask you, do you just put VC gaskets on bare w/o any sealant/dressing?

You do have a point, 6 sets or so is a relatively small cost for a single car, but multiply it times the number of 308s being serviced by owners & it'd add up to big $ overall.

Reason I suggested the neoprene/al sandwich is that no sealant would be needed & the Al in the middle would ensure the spacing.

 

I think you can use liquid gasket to great effect when re-using old gaskets but I'd be careful using it as the sole gasket. Why? because a certain amount of relative movement between the surfaces is Ok if you have enough thickness to start with. If you see what I mean.

Say the surfaces move apart by 0.2 mm cold-hot. If the original gasket was 1 mm thick you are only asking it to follow 20% expansion. With a liquid gasket which was squashed out to say 0.1 mm in the first place you are asking for 200% expansion which it will not do.

Neoprene gaskets often come with spacer plates for this reason.

 

As a practice they either go on dry or I lightly coat them with grease so they will lift right off. I use sealant only at the ends to fill gaps. If the surfaces are in good condition they will not leak.

That type of design is used and is a great time saver on race cars. We have them on the Bonneville car (Rodak Chevy) but the designs have either several dowels or more often a complete circumference channel to locate the gasket. And then they are endless unlike the Ferrari design. In those applications the motors dont run a long time between tear downs (often every run) so slight leakage is tolerated. Also on the average American engine the surface area is quite a bit wider.

The idea about a a metal shim is a good one for the motors that have hyd valves with no routine need to get in there.

Being in the business I put a dollar value on my time...all my time. When we do a valve adjust more time is spent cleaning and prepping to reassemble than adjusting the valves. The idea of spending all that time cleaning all that glue does not appeal to me at all. For that amount of time, it would be much cheaper to buy gaskets.

 

If you really want to improve the cars, make them more reliable, less maint intensive and more powerful develop a combined crank timed coil on plug/electronic FI package and throw all the distributors, carburetors and CIS systems in the dumpster where they belong.

No offense but they have all outlived their usefulness.


CIS is the worst part of my TR and the biggest reason I wish I had a 512.

 

Just think of all the fun you would have installing an up to date engine management system. Then you can tune it with your laptop between posts.

 

I agree with Brian, no need to reinvent the wheel. However, some decent neoprene cam cover, oil pan, gearbox pan, heck, all the paper gaskets of neoprene would be nice. I like being able to take things apart and clean things up more often than recommended, and scraping off gasket material or sealer just sucks.

The next time I assemble the engine to the gearbox, I am going to do it exactly the same way they put aircraft engine case halfs together. I will use the red liquid aircraft gasket cement, and run a fabric thread down the middle of the mating surface, and around the bolt holes. Also make sure you seal any studs that have open ends into the block or oilways. I had a stud under the timing gear cover leaking, and found it was open on the other end into the oil pickup cavity.

Another area is head gaskets. Does anyone have an opinion as to the finish quality we should have on the heads and block? I am of the opinion it should be as smooth as possible, maybe even polished. But a friend of mine said he heard otherwise, that it needs some roughness to seal properly. I would be interested to hear from anyone who has ran copper head gaskets.

 

That stud is supposed to have an O-ring around it. There's a countersink (like flathead screw) in the timing cover hole. It's a PITA to keep the o-ring in place while reinstalling the timing cover with the sump in place tho. Sometimes it works, sometimes you just have to pack RTV in around the stud.

 

In the old days the Italians used to use thread also. I have used it but in reality with todays sealants it is not required.

I also have heard that a rough surface was needed. The theory was that it held the gasket better from moving. With old poorly designed motors with old poorly designed gaskets and questionable machine work I suppose there was some validity to that. Ferrari in the modern era as well as companies like Rodak, Black, Chevrolet (racing div), Ford (Motorsports) all have supersmooth surfaces and zero head gasket problems. Thats good enough for me.


I have used solid copper gaskets but IMO are only needed in very special applications and prefer almost to their complete exclusion std composition gaskets of the Elring or Felpro type.

 

What's the theory behind the thread?

SWAG:To ensure that the sealant isn't completely crushed out of the seam?

 

I am talking about 50's era (early and mid) motors and gear boxes. Machine work and sealants were not as good and I think the thread would serve to dam up gaps that were too large for the sealants to handle.

 

Makes sense, wish I'd known that trick back in '68 when I was rebuilding an XK150 Jag's engine. The Jag DOHC inline 6 was notorious for developing oil leaks. Even worse than Ferraris.

Mine came out as one of the better ones, but I was a tad annoyed that I never could get the tach sender & a couple of other things to seal properly. Gasket shellac helped a lot, but some thread may have been just enough to stop the leak.

 

Verel during all of my Jag 6's and v-12's I found that the way I finallly sealed the cam covers was to take an 1/8" ball mill and cut a .030 deep groove in the center of the cam cover flat flange. Then I would use O-ring material I used to buy by the roll and cut it to length. Just tack it in with a thin coat of RTV to hold it and lay it on the head and my leaks were gone forever. I didn't get a chance to see if this can be done on the 308 covers but I'll take a look next time I need to do the belt change. I always remember what the Jag service guys used to tell me and it was "Jaguars don't leak oil , that is called CONTROLLED SEAPAGE" HAHA