Just wondering if anybody on here has added copper spray when assembling their heads on the head gaskets?

I'm refreshing my motor and decided to replace the HKS head gasket and was thinking of adding copper spray to help the tackiness, but wasn't sure if others had as well?

 

not too sure of mls gaskets but on v8's ive used it on copper gaskets and it works well. ive always been lead to believe any gaskets with a coating on them already its a bad idea.

personally ive never seen why it would be bad though since really the only purpose is to seal minor imperfections,mayby because its adding additional thickness that isnt gasket and could potentially weaking it, i could see that argument being used but never seen hard evidence or actually had that argument made always just a "dont do it". just make sure its tacky when you put the heads on and i would highly encourage doing a heat cycle or two blowing heat guns into the heads water passages at the back of the heads then retorque after they cool down just due to the soft nature of copper. honestly i did that on my dynosty headgaskets even without copper and got just a little more turn at the same 95 ft lbs.

 

Used to use it on sr20 tomei head gaskets when we used to re use them, by pulling them apart cleaning them spray them with copper spray re rivit them. It works great never had a problem up to 35psi boost with it.

 

oh yah also, i know NRE uses permatex super 300 on all his monsters but again its copper gaskets

 

Interesting discussion... We do use it on our copper gaskets, but we also re-use them and re-float the copper with a torch after each rebuild, but not really sure for the pre-coated gaskets like HKS... Wonder if any of the shops have done this on their builds?

 

i actually did some searching and i guess some of the fbody lsx guys do this quite a bit, so im going to go with the people always saying its a no go were just reciting old wives tales also found a single evo that ran cheapo $15 headgaskets with copper and held togeather at 700 whp but im thinking thats a little extreme.

 

My HKS head gasket was copper sprayed. I have 40K miles on them and its holding strong. Power ranges from 500-750whp for every mile on them.

 

I never use anything on MLS gaskets. I use copper spray only on solid copper gaskets. The mls are designed to crust properly to hold so they shouldn't need any extra.

 

We use copper spray on the MLS gaskets and have had good results. Really the copper spray is to minimize external oil seepage.