Hg Previously Replaced Tell Tale Signs

[dobboy 231 2 Cars]

Is there any easy way of telling if a head gasket has previously been changed?

 

Below the vacum pump of my new engine (vts) the HG tab looks to be 3-layer and has a hole on each end and two little notches cut out in the middle. This is different to a scrap (gti6) engine i bought which doesn't have any notches, and from what i can see is single layer (but i may be wrong on that)

 

Anyone know what's what or why they are different?

[welshpug 1,657]

if its a steel gasket on an xu10j4rs does it have any rivets holding the layers together on the front and back or on each end of the block?

 

if not then its an o.e gasket.

 

if its a fibre gasket then chances are its thicker than the 1.2mm standard one.

 

of course, theres the chance an o.e gasket was used, theyre around the same price as aftermarket, you can measure the height of the head but again, might not have been skimmed

 

std height is 137mm, max skim is 136.8mm (not 136.7 or less, as per well known leicester "specialist" )

[dobboy 231 2 Cars]

I never seen any rivets on either (but wasn't looking for them) On Vts engine I seen what looked like a tab from the top layer bent over and turned back on bottom layer.

 

The scrap engine was completely different but i think was only single layer.

 

I'll try get decent pics tomorrow.

[dobboy 231 2 Cars]

From top looking down (engine is on a stand)

 

 

 

There is a little tab on the top layer between the two little notches on the side, it wraps underneath the bottom layer.

 

[mikeyd 13]

some gaskets are notched to denote that it has been skimmed before[ ie thicker ] certainly a lot of diesel ones are-- could the 6 gasket be too?

[dobboy 231 2 Cars]

 

some gaskets are notched to denote that it has been skimmed before[ ie thicker ] certainly a lot of diesel ones are-- could the 6 gasket be too?

It's beyond me. What i've read on other forums is that a replacement gasket is often multi-layered, and from what i can tell it looks to be on the engine in the pic above. (not sure if these engines had multi-layer originally or not.)

[welshpug 1,657]

yep, they were a 3 layer unit but bonded together in some way not riveted, hard to tell from the pics but it might be a fibre gasket which is not original

[dobboy 231 2 Cars]

The top layer and bottom layer feel like metal if that makes any difference? not sure about middle.