Heads up on gasket kit

[msteiny]

Just received a DNJ Head Gasket Kit HGS4141 I ordered off Rockauto.com.

At first glance everything looked good, everthing sealed up nicely. Then I noticed I had 24 Brown valve stem seals, no black ones. I called Rockauto just to see what they said. I talked to a guy named Paul, nice guy. I told him the problem he told me he would call DNJ and get there take on the situation and he would call me back. Suprise, he called back. He told me that he talked to DNJ and they told him "It didnt matter on the color". Does it?

Now my gripe is then why would they (DNJ) make a kit VSS4111 with the two different colors. Not to mention the motors manual tells you what color goes on which valve. I explained this to Paul, he basically told me there was nothing he could do. I said "Thank you" and hung up.

I figured I would let you guys know how that went. So now I am off to by some black seals just to be on the safe side. If anyone needs some intake valve seals let me know, I can hook you up with a set.

 

[zak]

It does matter. The exhaust seals are designed to weep more oil through the valve guides than on the intakes as the exhaust runs hotter. Am sorry I don't recall whether the brown or the black seals are for intake/exhaust.

 

[msteiny]

Brown = Intake, Black = Exhaust.

 

[zak]

So if you run the brown seals on the exhaust side they will not get enough oil, and your valve guides will wear faster.

 

[msteiny]

Update

After work yesturday I went home and opened the kit. Removed the seals and looked at them more closely. They are the correct seals, just they are all brown. Other than this little hick-up it's a good looking gasket kit and will hopefully keep my oil in engine for at least a couple days.

I kinda feel like an ass having griped about this only find out I had the proper seals to begin with. But on the other hand after posting this I hope I may have saved somebody some time by going through all this crap like I did. Since this is the first v-six I've ever rebuilt things are kind of weird to me. And my engine stand looks really big with such a tiny engine on it.

One just has to pay more attention to what they're doing when they install the seals by grabbing the correct bag.

By the way all the valve seals and the rear main are Viton, I believe they are good up to 400-500 degrees.

 

[93rev2sev]

Good lookin out either way. The new seals are all Viton, I think. The original ones maybe didn't require Viton on the intake so using black silicon was less expensive for manufactureing ? ?

I can imagine the price of Viton going down enough that it would make more sence to save the money on the logistics side. EG. It's less expensive to make them all out of Viton than it would be to manufacture and carry 2 different types of seal.

 

[joelqburdett]

msteiny - Any update on the DNJ gaskets one year later?? I need to purchase and haven't had much luck finding anything -except the $1k gaskets sets a the SHO sites - I would rather a do over in a couple of years at $200. Would you recommend DNJ gaskets based on this experience? Thanks Q

 

[waffles]

Speaking of which, I ordered the same DNJ kit. How does one tell the difference between the intake and exhaust seals? Once again they are all the same color.

 

[msteiny]

Wow, I forgot all about this.

Yes, it is a good gasket kit. It has everything you will need to re-seal your engine. The only thing I didnt use out of the kit were the cam seals since I already had national seals. Other than that I have no complaints on the two kits I bought from Rockauto. I also have an engine that doesnt leak anymore (or at least for now).

Like I said above. Take your time and look everything over, because nothing is marked as to what it is. So thats why I got confused about the valve stem seals. They are different, just the same color.

One more thing, This kit doesnt include injector seals, so dont forget those. The ones I pulled out of my engine where pretty crappy.

Hope this helps.

 

[waffles]

How are they different? And how do I know which ones go where?

 

[msteiny]

Speaking of which, I ordered the same DNJ kit. How does one tell the difference between the intake and exhaust seals? Once again they are all the same color.

Kind of hard to explain. Take a look and you will see there is more seal material on the outside of the intake seal. This is the only way I could tell them apart.

Here take a look

Exhaust valve seals.
http://www.rockauto.com/catalog/moreinfo.php?pk=2651432&cc=1138801

Intake valve seals
http://www.rockauto.com/catalog/moreinfo.php?pk=2649758&cc=1138801