I can't believe they still sell these like this...

Stuck 'em in the freezer for about 2 hours and sure enough a good bunch of the top coating stayed on the plastic shrinkwrap. It's still "black" for the most part, but there's definitely some low spots in the material where you can see the metallic material underneath.

I'm going to put them on and hope for the best...

Which side is "up" on these things.. there's no marking that say which way is up and the two sides look different.

 

I hear ya about the coating!

The side with all the little "bumps" on it goes up.

 

Gotcha. If I can't find a set of these locally (doubt I will, who stocks LT1 performance parts locally?) I'm going to go with a set of Impala gaskets per Lloyd's recommendation as the "next closest thing"... I don't wanna risk anything. If I can find a set of them locally I can probably make one good set out of the two.

 

Nobody has these POS gaskets in stock locally. Mr. Gasket said if I'm seeing the metal through whats left of the graphite they're no longer any good.

Guess I'm not installing anything this weekend!

 

I had the same problem with mine. I bought another set and it did the same thing! so I called Mr Gasket and they sent me the headgaskets wrapped in paper in a cardboard box.

they even told me this happens alot...

SO FIX IT!

I still have two good ones, the ones that were on the bottom of each pack!

 

Yea I hear ya...I went thru 3 packages of 5716's being as carefull as possible to remove them from their package without problems...On the one set, I "also" tried putting them in the freezer for a while and they still ended up screwed up......I couldn't live with even one gasket from the whole bunch...So I ended up sending every set back to Summit , and in the end, went with the Impala gaskets........IMO the Impala gaskets are much higher quality anyway, and very importantly they had NO inperfections.....I would never chance using a head gasket with any unevenness to it..It "can" be gotten away with, but Iv'e seen way too many leak water if the uneven section is in the wrong area.....Here's my MR Gasket experience ...After a week of sending SEVERAL e-mails to them with no responce to my questions, and a phone call where I sat on hold for close to an hour, then was disconnected....I finally got a hold of someone there.....I told them about the packaging problem that alot of guys are having...they said they knew all about it and were right in the middle of completely changing their packaging for the 5716's and several other of their gaskets that have the same packaging problems.....I would have prefered to have the 26thou head gaskets instead of the Impala's 29thou, so In a nice way, I explained the terrible experience I had trying to get some customer service, and also told them about the several 5716 gaskets that I had to eat the shipping on, "to" and "from" Summit.....So I asked them if they had any unpackaged pairs that were alright(they said yea we have some ) So I asked if I could "please" purchase a pair directly from them given the headache, and money I already spent, and that this was the only hold up getting the motor running........The MR gasket rep took my phone number down and said He'd call me back ASAP and that it shouldn't be a problem......never heard back from them...3 days later I sent another e-mail to them to try and find out what the deal was........and again they never got back with me.......Nice customer service HUH .......

 

I never knew people were having problems with them.

 

Lots of people are unfortunately.. some people get away with stickin 'em in a freezer for a few hours, no such luck here though.

My bottom gasket in the set I received from Jegs is OK, the top gasket is trashed. Jegs doesn't even have anymore in stock and they don't show that they've got any on order. They were real nice and of course offered my money back and free return shipping, but that's not gonna help me right now.

Summit appears to have 'em in stock w/ reasonable Saturday delivery, so I'm going to go that route. Going to take the bottom gasket of the Summit one and return the two trashed ones to Jegs for my money back.. since I'm sure the top one of that set will be garbage as well.

None of these useless Chevy dealerships around my area have Impala head gaskets in stock, and no local stores carry the Mr. Gasket outside of special order.

I want to get the car done this weekend and i think it's the only thing holding me back.

So its dimpled side up right?

 

why dont you guys use the felpros?

 

.039 thickness, wrong amount of quench. (well, not wrong, but not ideal)

The Mr. Gaskets are .026

 

Yep. That's what they told me when I had called.

I did the same thing as you. I drove to Summit and got two of the ones from the bottom. They weren't PERFECT, but they were close.

With that being said, while tearing my engine down, I noticed where some coolant had leaked a little bit from one of the passages where the gasket should have sealed it. The heads were just milled, the block was stock (55K), heads bolts were torqued correctly (in steps and in the proper order). I'm certainly not saying it was the gasket, because there are so many variables that affect sealing, so people can draw their own conclusions as they see fit.

 

happened to me a couple weeks back, you couldnt see metal through where parts of the shiny part came off. I installed the faulty one any way.

 

Well, I asked nicely and they said they would send me a new pair via Saturday delivery. We'll see tomorrow afternoon.

 

The beauty of living 20 minutes from Summit

So they get messed up by taking the plastic packaging off? Why are they so fragile?

-Dustin-

 

Well, under normal conditions the sealing surface would be smashed against the head and wouldn't get "peeled" away by anything.

The plastic packaging is pressed on so damn tight that any heat on it maybe in transit or in their warehouse makes the plastic stick to the coating on the gasket.

On that note, my shipment went out today.. for overnight delivery for Monday. NOT what I asked for or what we talked about.

WHY DON'T PEOPLE LISTEN.

I can get 10000000 gaskets on Monday if I had ordered today.

At least Summit can take orders till 6pm, guess I have until then to decide.