So I've now burned through my 2nd set of gaskets in 6 months on the exhaust crossover pipe... time to find something better.

I knew that the material I bought (the highest temp stuff I found at Schucks) wasn't gonna last long, but I was hoping for more than a month.

Anyway... what should I be looking for? Something I can buy online? A preformed metal composite? The flange in question is just a standard 2 1/4" exhaust fitting.


Thanks for ideas and web links.

 

*bump*

 

Mark:

Not sure if this is what you are looking for...

http://www.customtacos.com/ubbthread...t=1#Post375215

 

dont they make copper gaskets for that?

 

 

Phenolic won't hold up to those type of temps for very long (intake temp with a turbo is much less than in an exhaust).

Mark, you might want to take a look at this as it relates to exhaust gaskets.
http://www.chevyhiperformance.com/techarticles/67519/

You might think about making your own gasket with some soft copper and a dremel tool.

Some good advice: Even the best wire-reinforced gasket will burn through if bolt torque loosens. You can tell a header or collector gasket is leaking by the carbon track on the gasket. Often, just retorquing the bolts will produce a leak-free seal.

 

Thanks for the responses guys...

Jamie; that's exactly what happened with the original gasket. Many moons ago I'd heard a ratttle under the truck, found it to be one of the bolts on the crossover and tighted it up. About 2 weeks later, the tell-tale "pfft-pfft-pfft" started. That was the first "edge burn".

Soft copper and the Dremel seems like the way to go... I'll check Summit, and I may just try some copper flashing from Home Depot... Hmmm...

 

You want to find the purest copper you can get because that will ensure it is soft and maliable, some of the flashing or copper sheet may be alloyed with other metals and won't compress as much as you would like to get for use as a gasket material. Most speed shops can get both copper and the wire reinforced fiber gasket material in sheets for a DIY gasket. We use to use the fiber stuff to make header gaskets all the time if we couldn't get what we needed. Worked very well.

 

'k... time to start smelting pennies and skimming out the tin.


Thanks Jamie!

 

fyi...

as a follow-up, I ended up getting gaskets from Summit Racing:

http://store.summitracing.com/defaul...237+4294921566

$4.88 each, free ground shipping but Summit's $8.95 handling charge sucked. They were still cheaper than I found elsewhere online, and I couldn't find anything reasonable locally.

 

I made my own for the cat gaskets out of .125 copper that I cut and annealed myself because they're so thick I can reuse them forever.

 

Yeah... that came up above somewhere (or I may have gotten that as a suggestion offline) but I don't have the time/energy/know-how to do something like that. I was happy paying $5/each to just have them done and ready to swap-in.