Hey guys,

I have the first warning signs of a blown HG on my 22re: little bit of milk appearing under oil cap, blows white smoke till warm up on cold days, and a one-cylinder misfire that usually happens upon startup and persists for about 20 seconds and then settles down.

The engine is professionally rebuilt with ENGNBLDR parts and gaskets, assembled and installed by me roughly 4 years and 30k miles ago.

The engine runs great, plenty of power, decent mileage. So my plan is to simply R&R the headgasket and maybe do the timing chain and water pump while I'm at it.

My question is, for the actual head gasket part, should I just use another Ted gasket or get an OEM one like this (Ishino brand):

https://www.autohausaz.com/search/pr...0Head%20Gasket

I'm curious if anyone has useful information about the head gasket quality in these two cases.

 

hey rust , i'm not a expert but i wouldn't use the rock brand .i would go with factory toyota ,thats what i'm going 2 do when i do mine.

 

Was a post comparing HG a couple weeks back. I ordered an aftermarket upper set but am using factory HG. For the price of the online may be cheaper to go to dealship after shipping.

Putting mine back together now, just took a sandwich break. Can't finish today anyways waiting on a complete injector seal kit. Upper set came with o-rings only.

 

Thanks for the input. I think I may go with factory parts then.

 

I have always used Toyota HG from the dealer. Its one of those parts that theres no reason to skimp on.

 

A Toyota head gasket was $54 for me and they had it in stock. To me, thats a good price. Im sure down in the states they are even cheaper. IMO, go with a TOYOTA head gasket. Like already said, its not something to skimp on.

 

yea had two rock head gaskets fail in under 5k miles....last one overheated the motor and warped the head never again never again!!!!

 

Just did the job and used a HG from the dealership, it was about $45. Worth it for the peace of mind AND not having to do it again in 6 months!

BTW, the product I got from AutohausAZ.com was identical to the factory part and was $10 cheaper. I would have used it, but they tried to ship it three times and UPS managed to mangle every one. Granted, they weren't packaged very well... But I've never had that sort of problem with that company before, and they dealt with it very promptly!

 

rock HG here, almost 6500 miles and still fine. I don't know what you guys are doing, but so far so good for me.

 

Well, mine failed at about 30k. LOL

 

I ended up using the FelPro kit (HS26185PT2 I believe) when did mine last year. A year later the truck is still running strong with 190k miles on the engine. I did have to replace the head with a new one, though (cracked it).

I used a ROCK gasket set on a friend's 3VZE engine. No problems yet. He wanted to save some money, so hopefully that won't come back to bite him.

I went through the same thing when I was doing me 22RE...asking around what gasket set to use. Of course, I got mixed results. If you are just doing the HG, and don't need any other gaskets, then might as well go with a Toyota. I wanted a kit and wanted to save some money, so I went with the Felpro...which seemed like a step up from ROCK.

There are A LOT of factors that go into whether or not your HG lasts, not just the HG itself. Proper installation is key, and if you don't take the time to do things right, it doesn't matter what kind of HG you have.

-Are the threads in the block clean (run a chaser past them)? If the bolts are being re-used, are the treads clean? This can significantly throw off your torque readings.
-Were the bolts torqued properly? That is, stepping up the torque little by little until the max torque is reached, with backing them off 1/4 turn in between each increment.
-Were the bolts re-torqued after the initial warm up?
-Is the block flat and cleaned?
-Is the head flat and clean? Has it been decked?

Sure, some of this stuff takes extra time, but to me its more important than the brand of gasket. I spent a lot of time on my job, making sure everything was clean, etc. I dunno...just makes me feel better I guess.

 

Did you ever get going on your head gasket replacement. I'm having exactly the symptoms you describe, except for the misfire, and I'd love to hear your tale of what you had to do to get it swapped out.

 

Go OEM! 70k and still going strong

 

What is it with the Rock HGs? Too much metal?

 

I had a rock last 8,500 miles on a rebuild on my '86. It like, disintegrated between two cylinders. I have Felpro on the '86 and '88 now.

 

Felpro!! Never had a problem with them
Ive heard rock is not so hot

 

That's what I have been observing, not very many positive remarks (none actually) about the Rock. I have one waiting to be installed, part of a kit, but I think I'll pick up an OE. I have had too much drama with this rebuild to take chances with a HG.

Where there is smoke there is fire, usually.

 

Did a successful HG replacement using the Toyota part. Here were the extra steps I took to ensure a good job:

Reused the headbolts but cleaned them and their threads thoroughly. Replaced each headbolt into its original hole.

Ran a thread chaser through the headbolt holes in the block, blasted them with brake cleaner after and compressed air.

Cleaned mating surfaces of head and block with a whetstone and WD-40 followed by a good wiping with acetone.

(The old HG left a crapload of graphite stuff on the face of the block. It took forever to scrape it off! Alot of it got into the coolant passages and stuff, so after the work I changed both the coolant and oil after about 50 miles.)

Torqued bolts in 3 or 4 steps up to 63#.

After a few hundred miles, opened the valve cover when cold and retorqued. The center two bolts needed an extra 1/4 turn and the others were snug.

Everything seems to be holding fine!!

 

About time for me to retorque mine. Got some Rotella synthetic to put into it. Good to hear all has worked out good.

 

Use the Victor