I will be rebuilding a 3.0 very soon, i was wondering what kind of head gaskets everyone has been using. i will be rebuilding the heads and having them trued, i also will have the block decked and trued, and i will be using ARP head studs instead of bolts. i will also be installing headers to get rid of that xover pipe. should i use a graphite, mls, or teflon coated? there are so many like felpro, vector,top line, rock, itm just to name a few. any help on this will be great.

 

www.engnbldr.com or OEM from the dealer. There's a Toyota dealer in Houston who does discounts to forum members, about 25% or so.

 

is the oem gasket graphite of a coated gasket?

 

dunno.

 

anyone else?

 

Stick with oem.

Rob

 

for the head gasket, I would go with OEM also.

 

Nothridge Toyota: Call 1-818-734-5600


Ask for Carrie or Richard: I think list price is something like $56 apeice for each gasket. You get 25 % off that plus free ups or fed ex to your door. They are friendly and fast. I think that the complete top end set price will surprise you. Personally at $94 the engnbldr. set seems to me to be the same quality at far less expense.

I am waiting for someone to post a set of Toyota OEM headgaskets side by side the Rock Gaskets (engnbldr.com). There is a lot of hype and if it all comes down to OEM is superior to Rock then that should be clarified for once and for all.

Just my 2 cents though and I'm far from an expert. From what I've learned chase those bolt holes and get Ted's (engnbldr.com) 10.9 head bolts. He just e-mailed me and should it blow again his are reuseable; supposedly the Toyota TTY at $160 for all ($10 apiece) are not to be reused and part of what surrounds the mystery of repeat failures. From all I've learned Toyota had their techs reuse the bolts up to 3 times to save money.

Enjoy.