To use the 4 gaskets on the valley pan or not?

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phaelax

phaelax

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I went to replace the valley pan gasket (oil leak coming from it) and the new one came with 4 other gaskets to go with it. The old one (which was the same felpro it looks like) didn't have these on it. And I've read online other people said they didn't use them either. So are they even necessary? A lot of this stuff is still new to me.

Here's the replacement I bought: http://www.jegs.com/i/Fel-Pro/375/1215/10002/-1

It's for a 440 block.
 
I have always made them out of thin paper gasket material glued to valley pan with high tack gasket sealer and then used ultra copper permatex to seal ends and corners on bb intakes.
Kind of a lot of work but never had a vacuum or oil leak ever. I believe felpro makes the thin gaskets but I have never bought any myself. I always keep rolls of different thickness and gasket material on hand for whatever comes along.
I think this is a area where you could get a lot of variation in answers. They probably all will
work fine. Starting with clean oil free intake and valley pan is the most important thing.
 
I did a test fit first. I didn't use the extra paper gaskets with the metal pan, used rtv where it said to, and let it sit over night. Been running for about 10min now, so far no more oil leak. Hopefully my parts come in this week for the missing choke plate on the carb.
 
Someone told me (might have been felpro...) that the paper gaskets were for when you had to reuse the bathtub gasket. No idea but I always used indian shellac on the embossed metal gasket and never had an issue.
 
I use to use a little ultra grey on the pan at the bottoms of the ports and the ends of the valley.
never had an issue, even reused one at the track once without an issue.
( bent a pushrod had to fish it out & needed to drive the car home )
 
I always thought that the extra thin gaskets were used if you had an aluminum intake.
I think i read it in the FSM that you sandwiched the bath tub gasket with them.......
 
Dartnut said:
I always thought that the extra thin gaskets were used if you had an aluminum intake.
I think i read it in the FSM that you sandwiched the bath tub gasket with them.......
Click to expand...

You are right, we used them alot with aluminum intake and cast iron heads. The heat expansion and ten cooling off sometimes would cause a vaccuum leak with just a valley pan gasket. I still use them with my aluminum intake and aluminum heads.
 
Well, looks like another issue has arisen. Took it down the highway a little bit and around town to make sure there weren't anymore issues, and started getting a little smoke. Popped the hood and I got oil everywhere but I can't tell where it came from. Obviously my first thought was that pan gasket, but I don't see any oil around it at all. This didn't happen until about an hour after driving it so it could be unrelated and I'm just unlucky.
 
Looks like it blew the dipstick out and leaked from there *facepalm*
 
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