[color:"purple"]concerning 93 22RE [/color]

anyone know where to get the gasket that goes between the upper and lower intake sections?

also, whats the best head gasket out there for the above?

thanks

Toyota or Napa.

For head gaskets (on any vehicle) I only ever buy them from the dealer. A head gasket from napa will probably work...but the one from the dealer will without question last for a long time. Guess it comes down to whether or not saving the $30 or $40 is worth the possibility of having to change it again within the next 50k miles.

Does anyone have an opinion on ACL headgasket sets?
BTW - what does the stock gasket cost?

Have you checked with ENGBLDR? He carrys lots of good stuff and refuses to sell crap.

I bought my rebuild kit from Ted. Thanks for asking. I also found out the gasket between the intake manifold and the upper chamber comes in the rebuild kits. In fact I found an old unused one I have. I love the exploded views in the FSM :-)

Anyone familiar with ACL or Cometic headgaskets? I;ve heard people say they are better than the Toyota gasket. And I'm curious to know what the HG from Toyota dealers costs. Emailed Bob Bridge, but no reply until they're open.

My experience has been: not the gasket name, but the head re-torque. If you don't re-torque after a few hundred miles, it didn't matter what brand gasket I had in there. Blowen again after 2000 miles! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

I've heard this same thing from many folks, but have never understood it.
NO new car EVER has to have the head bolts re-torqued, people just buy them and drive.
What's the difference?

Well one thing that most people do (especially in Toyotas) is reuse the head bolts. When the engine is being assemled at the factory the bolts have never been stressed in any way, so when they are torqued they are set at a certain amount of internal stress that keeps pressure on the head. In all the Audi's I've worked on the head bolts are one time use only so have to be replaced each time you install the head.

Also when they are done at the factory they have clean threads and mating surfaces that allow a perfect amount of torque to be applied. When you do a head gasket on an old engine the threads could be dirty or corroded and the mating surfaces not entirely clean so a standard torque wrench could actually indicate proper torque prior to the bolt being fully stressed in tension. After you run the engine for a while it would allow you to verify that the bolt is actually correctly torqued via heating/cooling and vibration allowing it to move. When I've done mine I've always checked them after a few hundred miles, but they never seem to need any tightening (Maybe I was just lucky).

I'm not sure how Toyota does it at the factory, but most Audi's and other german cars use the 'Torque turn' type method. First the bolt is set to a pre-determined torque, then turned through a certain number of degrees to tighten. Using that method is slightly more repeatable for a proper torque application and less sensitive to contaminants, but technically requires a special very expensive torque wrench (or a good calibirated eye).

There may be more to it than that but that is my current understanding.

Cometic makes good metal head gaskets. They are good especially when running turbo or supercharged, esp with head studs. For a stock engine, toyota gaskets are just fine. I'll be running OEM gaskets and headbolts on my s/c'd 3.4. If i was going turbo, i'd get cometic gaskets and ARP studs (turbo would be more power).