86mm Cometic HG

[timtiminy]

anybody have any experience with the newest cometic head gaskets for the sr20det, they now have a 86mm size which was not available a while ago. I know there was problems with them sealing in the past, but iirc they only had 88.5mm and it may have been associated with using the 88.5mm HG and having the stock 86mm bore. Cometic is also advertising that they are Viton coated, not sure if the older 88.5mm ones were... i just wanted to see if anyone has had any experience with the newest ones.

[s13drob]

i dont have experience with cometic, but if u want i can get a Power ent. HG for 185. if you dont know about them they make the highest quality HGs along with apexi, HKS, and tomei

[timtiminy]

considering the cometic head gasket can be had for < $100 I may just try it out. the PWR Gasket does look like its legit though.

[s13drob]

yea. im on a budget myself. hopefully others will chime in and shed light on ur questions.

i was told PWR has few employess and over 50% are engineers. so im sure high caliber shit. good luck

[180sxLove]

I just ordered a Cometic 86x.040mm HG for my build.. I will post up my experiences next week when things start coming together

[Harris]

I have Cometic 87mm HG. Needless to say, but given a certain issue I'm dealing with, the HG is no good. I'm going with someone else, don't know yet who though.

[pwhitersxs]

I have had my cometic HG for 1.5 years I think (I lose track of when I do projects). Have tracked it multiple times and I have yet to have a problem. Although I would recommend a power enterprise or apex'i head gasket.

[djcobra]

If I were you I wouldn't cheap out (budget) on a Head Gasket, either go full out or don't even bother; Go with Apex'I or any other High Quality brands i.e, HKS etc...

[sac]

If I were you I wouldn't cheap out (budget) on a Head Gasket, either go full out or don't even bother; Go with Apex'I or any other High Quality brands i.e, HKS etc...
+1 to that^^ its your head gasket. I would say if you plan on putting more than 15psi on your motor on a reg basis or you push it to redline alot, pony up the $ and buy top quality.

[GSXRJJordan]

Most metal head gaskets are .5 or even 1.0 mm larger than your bore ~ I don't know why Cometic would make one exactly the stock bore, especially when most people doing rebuilds overbore a tad to clean up the cylinder walls.

Anywho, it's been said ~ Power Enterprise, Tomei, Apexi, HKS.

[Sileighty_85]

Power Enterprise FTW,
I almost went for Cometic (I was in a hurry to get it finished) but when I talked to my parts guys, They said with everything I did to mine I might as well go with a PE H/G,
Do it right the the first time, dont be cheap, or you'll end up spending twice the amount the second go round.

Get some APR Head Studs While your at it

[ManoNegra]

Where's the love for the KA? But yeah, Apexi or PE.

[timtiminy]

so i was reading up on cylinder head resurfacing and noticed that the surface smoothness has to be much higher when using a MLS head gasket, I am thinking that the reason why people have issues with using MLS head gaskets is because they just take their head and block to the local machine shop to have it resurfaced (if they even have it resurfaced) and slap on a mls gasket not taking into consideration the gasket needs a much smoother finish than what a common machine shop can provide. oh and cometic has sizes ranging from 86mm-88.5mm (86mm, 86.5mm, 87mm...) i might be overboring my bock to 86.2 to fit oem overbored pistons so i am thinking of using the 86.5mm x 0.04" gasket. I am confident that if i have the block and head resurfaced with an ra of under 20 i should be good no matter the headgasket i use.

[GSXRJJordan]

^^^ That's the point that everyone makes when talking about Cometic gaskets... the counterpoint is that all the other metal head gaskets we listed don't need a mirror finish to work extremely well.

[timtiminy]

why would i want to just put a headgasket on a nasty surface anyhow, i know it could probably work with spraying it with that copper stuff but why not do it right no matter the headgasket used...