V8 Head Gaskets

[Mike Jenkins]

I'm new here so be gentle!

I have a 1987 3.5 v8 90, all original as far as I can tell.

I had some problems with leaking (overflowing) water and suspected one of the head gaskets/inlet manifold gasket was leaking.

After stripping down the LHS to begin with, the head gasket's in a pretty poor state, so it seems worthwhile. Is it worth using a composite gasket instead of the standard metal one? Real Steel have been recommended to me, but I'm a bit confused...

I'm not too worried about the loss of compression - max power isn't that important to me so much as reliability. Does the manifold gasket still line up if I use a composite head gasket or would a composite valley gasket sort that out as well?

Do I need to change the head bolts for different ones or can I re-use the old ones? The engine manual says to replace the bolts on engines with composite gaskets, but it's ok to re-use the bolts on the older engines. Would I use the torque settings from the newer engine?

Thanks for any advice - it's a great forum with loads of interesting posts.

Cheers.

Mike

[orangemach5]

Use a composite valley gasket along with composite head gaskets, they seal soo much better! Real steel is a good place to get V8 bits and bobs and are very helpfull over the phone, however i have aways given RPi a ring when i need bits (where the parts from my last 3.9 cam and top end rebuild came from).

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

^^^

what he says

Composite is the way to go 101%

Nige

[FridgeFreezer]

Composite! And another vote for Real Steel.

Don't worry about it lining up, the difference is half of naff all.

If you can stretch to a set of ARP head studs, real steel sell a set for ~£79 which is pretty good, you don't need the outer 8 as they were deleted on later engines as they actually make the head seal worse! To blank the holes, stick the old ones in and just torque to a very low figure.

[paintman]

And don't fully tighten the outer row of head bolts. They cause the head to tip & are deleted altogether from the later V8's - as in no holes drilled in the heads or block.

Just nip them up to fill the holes (some say throw them away!)

Ah, I see I was beaten to it by a minute or so! ^^^^^^^

[Mike Jenkins]

Thanks for all the advice.

I ordered composite head and inlet-manifold gaskets from Real Steel.

They suggested I stick with the factory head bolts unless I wanted to build a high performance engine.

Are the torque settings the same for the composite gaskets?

Mike