Whenever we do a manifold gasket set, we take the manifolds to a machine shop and have the faces run through a milling machine. He has had to take as much as half a millimetre off one to make it uniformly flat. There's a lot of variation, and it's not down to heat but the poor original casting. We haven't been going long enough to see the longevity of one of our jobs but over the weekend I saw a car on which we did the job a year ago and it has the sweetest exhaust note now, having done several thousand miles in between. The trip to the machine shop is also useful for removing any snapped off studs. We use the individual gaskets and replace all hardware at the same time. Martin kevin creason wrote: >How long do the exhaust manifold gaskets last? Low, >high, average? Any ideas? >I replaced all mine 2.75 years ago, and I can hear a >little "beetling" on initial acceleration. It's not >bad yet, as you can't hear it standing out back >working the throttle spool, and a fellow car-nut >(mustang) passenger couldn't hear it all. But it is >enough to that I can hear it and I don't like it. > >And why do the Delo's have this problem? Is it the >aluminum engine and the cast iron exhaust manifolds? >I saw on someone's site that there are stainless-steel >gaskets. Will those work any better? Will stainless >steel manifolds work better? >-Kevin >#4687 > To address comments privately to the moderating team, please address: moderators@xxxxxxxxxxx For more info on the list, tech articles, cars for sale see www.dmcnews.com To search the archives or view files, log in at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dmcnews Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dmcnews/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: dmcnews-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/