Head gaskets

[Steve6088]

I chickened out and got a mechanic to change my leaking head gasket in the end. He only charged me £70, so not too bad.

He mentioned to me that as the standard gasket is made of two layers, I could just fit one of the layers and increase compression. This would have the same effect as getting the cylinder head ground down.

Has anybody tried this?

[budd]

I'd guess multi layer gaskets are like that for a reason, so spliting it may not be a good idea, although I may be wrong and it'll be perfectly fine, but I'd say if you want to increase compression then skim the head,

[tony.mon]

+1 on this idea, I think the two layers sandwich some gasket material.

After all, you've already had a leaking gasket....

But if you're determined, you can strip the engine, and using a piece of flat glass and some grinding paste, get a perfectly flat surface on both the top of the cylinder and the base of the ehad.
Then assemble using a tiny smear of silicon sealer.

But it's MUCH easier to deck the heads.