Hey Vance,
I didn4t see anyone respond to you via the list about your intake/exhaust
gasket so I thought I4d send you one.
It depend on what type of gasket you have. The stock intake/exhaust gaskets
are a thin sheet of metal and a layer of gasket material. I don4t tend to
use those. I like the thicker, all gasket material ones. Some people refer
to these as "high performance" manifold gaskets. Whatever. For these
all-fiber gaskets you would just lay the gasket down on a hard surface and
use an exacto knife to trim off very small pieces. Make sure the blade is
new. Or even better, use a piece of scrap heater duct metal and cut a
varying relatively-tight curve in it. Use that as a rough moveable template
to make sure that you don4t cut too far into the gasket. Another option is
to carefuly hold the gasket in your hands and insert the blade through the
port openings and shave off a little at a time. This allows you to use more
of a sawing motion (this is what I do).
Modifying the metal/fiber combination gaskets could be trickier. I would
recommend using a dremel with a fine cut off wheel to first remove the metal
part of the gasket that you don4t want. I wouldn4t try to cut the metal
part because cutting or die/stamping tools tend to twist, bend, or crimp the
metal layer which, in turn, significantly increases the chances of manifold
leaks, especially for the exhaust. Then follow up by shaving off the fiber
part of the gasket.
But first, before cutting the gasket, mate it up to the intake manifold to
see if it covers up some of the openings there. If it doesn4t cover up any
part of the opening on the intake manifold then the intake ports on the head
may be larger than the openings in the intake manifold or they may not be
perfectly aligned. This isn4t uncommon. I saw this once.
What I usually do (especially for port matching headers, as it is even a
more common issue there) is to run the engine for a while (a few months or
several hundreds of miles) and then pull off the manifolds and look at both
sides of the gasket for signs of exposure and the exhaust manifold for
carbon deposits. Where there is discoloration on the gasket will tell you
where it was exposed and where there might be port misalignment or gasket
overhang. Of course you have to use a new gasket, by hey, we4re made of
money, right? This can also happen with stock intake ports, though less
likely, unless you ported your head. Did you port your head?
Oh, and thanks for instigating the 1,927 posts on compression ratio.
Happy holidays,
Dave Herbert
1969 TR6 (with squished block/head, id est- zero deck height block, done in
1984)
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