I just got off the phone with a sales/tech rep at Cometic who informed me that because they have never built an MLS /6 head gasket, if I wanted to get one made, it would cost $3,000.00 for tooling costs.

I hung up...

Then it hit me that if we could do a group buy of, say, ten of these gaskets, the tooling costs could be shared among the proplr purchasing them, and it becomes a lot more affordable.

I think that using an MLS gasket could preclude O-ringing the block or head in forced induction engines and nitrous applications as well.

There seems to be quite a bit of interest in super- and turbo-charging the leaning tower of power, lately, and I am wondering if enough interest exists in a griup buy to make this feasible.

I will call them again and get a quote on a group buy if ten gaskets, unless somebody else has already done this.

Time elapses... do-do-do-do-do....

I caled them back and talked to "Christian" at Cometic, and he was amenable to the idea of a group buy of ten people which would result in a price of $448.00 per gasket. That would be $300.00 each for the share of tooling, and $148.00 for each gasket.

Can I get some feedback from anyone who would be interested in this?

I have NO IDEAS if there are ten people who might be interested in an MLS gasket for their forced induction/nitrous engine, but I thought it might be worth a try.

Thanks for listening.

Bill, in Conway, Arkaansas



Well,

Then you will have to pay $3000 bucks plus the cost of 9 more gaskets. Been there, done that with another inline group. There's much cheaper and better alternatives for the cost.

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There's no such thing as too much cam....only not enough engine!

That is a lot of money for a head gasket. If we get enough people to go in on this, and put up the money for the tooling, who owns the tooling? If Cometic now sells these gaskets on the open market, do we get a "prorata refund" on our investment in the tooling?
Are these gaskets, so much better then what is available, now, to justify the expense? It seems to me that the gaskets that are already out there work fine for a moderately boosted engine. For a high boost engine, there are copper gaskets from Hussey, and SCE. When I did the group buy from Hussey, they had an "engineering" charge, which they waived, on a $500 minimun order. The gaskets have all been the then "current" pricing, at approx, $100 ea.

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Charrlie_S
65 Valiant 100 2dr post 170 turbo
66 Valiant Signet 170 nitrous
64 Valiant Signet
64 Valiant 4dr 170
64 Valiant 4dr 225

Yep, thats the other downside Charrlie, the 11th person that calls after your buy-in gets his/her gasket for $148 bucks. You have to eat the development costs of getting the tooling made, thats just how it is unfortunately. Also, as has been mentioned already, there are cheaper and better alternatives that already exist with having to re-invent anything yet.

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There's no such thing as too much cam....only not enough engine!

http://slantsix.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=50612

Much cheaper alternative.

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Official Cookie and Mater Tormentor.

I am interested in this, but $450/gasket is pretty salty. If they can do what Charlie suggests and do some sort of discount on further gaskets, I might be able to see that. I thought we had someone on this site who had already talked with them about this?

Can we choose bore size so we could have them made for the alum engine (3.460" bore size of gasket), and also for iron (say 3.65" bore of gasket)??

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Thanks to everyone who responded on this thread. You all had good, worthwhile information and from your responses, it seems the members of this board who have been here for a while, have been down rhis road before with a variety of answers to the head gasket issue, all cheaper than the MLS one.

I made a mistake when I built this engine. I chose an engine builder who was not familiar with the process of O-Ringing the block. Our block has no O-Rings, but rather, one of the shim steel head gaskets (from Australia, I think) and some RJC (Buick turbo guy,) sealer (gasket installer goop,) and some special-order ARP 220,000-psi head studs that are not supposed to strretch as much as the off-the-shelf, 180,000-psi, garden variety ARP items.

I was looking for, not a head gasket that would work (not fail) in a medium-boost application (10-15 pounds of boost,) but rather something that would work reliably, on my engine at, say, 30 pounds of boost, without having to go back nd pull the engine and install O-Rings and copper gaskets.

I think the MLS gaskets would do that. Not certain, but I think they would.

I guess I'll never know... lol!

It's obvious from the responses here, that boosting a slant six into the 30-pound range, is not something that many folks are trying to do.

I am lusting after performance like Ryan Peterson's '66 Valiant and Tom Wolfe's 500 hp '71 Dart. Our engine is a clone (bald-faced copy) of theirs, but we neglected to seal the top deck with O-Rings (like they did) and now it has come back to bite us.

I guess the only thing to do is pull the engine and O-Ring it like we should have done in the first place.

I certanly don't blame anyone who doesn't waant to pay $ 450 for a head gasket!

All of your responses make good sense and I agree with it all...

I just diesn't work for me.

Thanks for listening!!!

Bill

I spoke to Cometic, two times, at the PRI show. They were not interested, at those times.

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Charrlie_S
65 Valiant 100 2dr post 170 turbo
66 Valiant Signet 170 nitrous
64 Valiant Signet
64 Valiant 4dr 170
64 Valiant 4dr 225

With someone being so unfamiliar with such a basic operation for a race engine, you need to do yourself a favor and tear the engine back down and take it to a shop that is more competent before you realize other things he wasn't familiar with.

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There's no such thing as too much cam....only not enough engine!

CNC-Dude,

That would be good advice for us if we were 25 years old and time were not such a factor, but I am 74 and my partner in this effort is 75; we don't have the luxury of always doing the smart thing; sometimes we have to look at the other aspects of the operation, like are we actually going to get to see this thing make a full pass under boost before the old clock on the wall says it's time to go...

The guy who did the machine work on this engine makes his living building dirt track motors that are all naturally-aspirated and have no need for O-rings. He's been in business doing that for a lot of years, but those engines just don't generate the kind of cylinder pressure where head gaskets are a problem. And, if that happens, they can call Cometic and order a set of MLS gaskets and the problem may well go away..

I can't do that. LOL!

Thanks for your advice; I know it's well-meaning.

Bill in Conway, Akansas

Well, i've been following your build and just hate to see you take that kind of a gamble. You have spent a good bit of dough on this build and have used a lot of good parts, just hate to see a month or so down the road when you get to the track and find out should have looked back over some things.

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There's no such thing as too much cam....only not enough engine!

Bill I know you and I talked about this the other day I've heard that felpro is making a form of mls gasket it might be worth contacting someone from there.
I personally had a hard time getting the hussey gasket to seal up properly Damn thing leaked and I used a special sealant.
If you can get the price down I'd be in for two of them
Aaron

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http://youtu.be/2Y4i4UOLiSA

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/sho ... p?t=126611

At 30 pounds of boost you need O-rings.

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Official Cookie and Mater Tormentor.

Hi guys;
There's yet another option that needs to be addressed, and I'll be looking at it, soon. That is, O-Ringing the cylinder head instead of the block.

That would entail removing the head while leaving the block in place.
The machine work (probably could be done on a vetical mill,) would doubtlesss be more expensive than O-Ringing the block, but the man-hours spent in our shop, getting it all to work would be considerably less.

I agree with Slantzilla; O-Rings probably would be the best idea on a 30-pound boosted engine.

We may never see that amount of pressure in our intake system, as we're working up to that figure in baby steps, 5 psi at a time, but that was our goal.

The whole idea behind this project was to take advantage of the super-strong block/head infrastructure of the slant six engine, in terms of utilizing that strength to create and use that elevated amount of cylinder pressure, that would pay dividends in output at the flywheel.

At some point, the slant six's Achilles Heel will rear its ugly head, and we'll find out just where the limit is, for this little engine. Somebody, maybe Will, or Aaron, may be the one to find it when it pushes the main bearing saddles out the bottom of the block, or the crank breaks in half, but I'm betting it will take somewhere North of 35 pounds of boost to do it. With the advance plate locked at 18 degrees, the right A/F ratio (11.5:1?) and sufficient octane (110+ maybe) it may be possible to achieve 600 reliable horsepower with this thing; I dunno.

Finding out is definitely going to be fun, though!

Thanks for all your helpful comments!!!

Bill, in Conway, Arkansas

The 13:1 engine I put together had o-rings in the block, receiver grooves in the head and a Hussey Performance copper head gasket in between. Too bad Hussey Performance is gone.

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Joshua