can a head gasket not run be r &r once

hey so i torqued my z-1 motor and set everything and all seems good turns over and timing on cams is good motor is smooth turning...tdc right..tensioner re-set...ect..
...my stupid question is....can i take the motor apart again and re-use this cometic head gasket if i have not ran the motor with this h-gskt or retorqued again......i wanna do the whole thing over and do some different timing roller replacment....and will just buy another 72mm gskt if need be....thanks no exp here so thought i'd ask you guys....thanks

generally not. The metal part is a "crush gasket" and once it is set, it wont be the same the next time you torque it. Any variation at all in the torquing and it wont seal.

I guess if the first time you torqued it you were at the minimum torque, and if the second time you torqued it to the max value then maybe you could crush it further and it may seal.

roll the dice....

On my single cylinder 2 strokers As long as it has not been heated up, I have used it over at least once with no problems. if it is run the copper gets hard and will not seal very good. I did "reconstitute one in an emergency by heating it up very carefully to a very dull red and letting is cool down. this "anneals" it back to soft. have to be super careful not to oxidize it while your heating with a flame. Not a recommended do it all the time deal but is possible.

of course there is the PITA factor. To replace a head gasket on a 2 stroker is like maybe 10 mins tops. for the KZ its a little more involved. may not be worth taking a chance.

craig do you have a fiber gasket or the copper head gasket or the graphite one from cometic if you have the fiber one if you can get it out in one piece it should be reuseable as long as there is no material transfer, the copper head gasket can be reused if you heat it up cherry red with a torch and then quench it in water quickly it softens it back up. the graphite one is a different story definitly one use only.

i think it is a fiber with metal o rings around the sleeves...i am gonna see how it looks after i tear down.. and then see if i gotta order one....no big ....i googled after this post and cometic gskts ( for cars) all had reuse in the blogs guess a phone call wont hurt either.....i just wanna go through the motors top end once more ,now that i got the thing back in one unit and the extras all tossed or boxed away and do a tighter..more specs...cleaner build...thank you for the answers....got er all sealed up and soaked in oil for now at least and mounted some avons today....break em in tomorrow...i need to check the cometic part # and see what material i guess..thanks guys

good night..i'm burned out ...lifted that thing around the shop twice...old back,,,young heart

good luck craig and i hope all goes well for you have a good night.

Just for information's sake I did some research on the copper annealing thing. dull red or cherry red same deal as long as you get it over about 700F. unless you have some way to measure the temp, Cherry is for sure hot enough by eye but is very close to major oxidation. Dull red is hot enough but hard to tell your there.

Quench or not to Quench in water? Apparently makes no difference to the copper. will be annealed either way

The copper is hardened by compressing it or working it not the temp that it gets to by what ever it is sealing.

mute point if your gasket is a fiber/metal crush to seal type anyway. I would get a new one.

Pay the little extra and put a new one in... Then you don't ever have to think/worry about it again....

There's enough crap in rebuilding these old beauties to drain the brain over and this should not be one of them...
Just think how pissed off you're going to be if you don't and you go through everything required to put her back together & first start and you find an oil leak!

Just my worthless 2 cents....

I resuse gaskets all the time and never had one leak. I just wouldn't reccommend it to anyone else. Only gasket I won't reuse is a water cooled head gasket. All you people out there saying the crush the crush? It crushed it once didnt it? Why won't it crush again? It's not the spring in the steel that keeps it sealed, it's the pressure. So if you have a new gasket better watch out cuz it isnt crushed yet like a used one and it could leak. And all you guys need really to get your heads decked. And do the blocks too cuz that'll be the next reason a good new gasket fails and the blame would be once again put somewhere convenient. And that's any way the wind blows. :woohoo:

trianglelaguna wrote:

hey so i torqued my z-1 motor and set everything and all seems good turns over and timing on cams is good motor is smooth turning...tdc right..tensioner re-set...ect..
...my stupid question is....can i take the motor apart again and re-use this cometic head gasket if i have not ran the motor with this h-gskt or retorqued again......i wanna do the whole thing over and do some different timing roller replacment....and will just buy another 72mm gskt if need be....thanks no exp here so thought i'd ask you guys....thanks

The official answer is NO. That said, I did it last time I put my motor together. The base gasket failed after about 100 miles of running and I had to tear it apart again... The head and cylinders were perfectly smooth and the head gasket looked fine, so I reused it and it has worked perfectly.

Obviously, it would have been better if I had a new one, but they are not easy to find on old twins and I didn't want to wait another two weeks.

nads.com wrote:

I resuse gaskets all the time and never had one leak. I just wouldn't reccommend it to anyone else. Only gasket I won't reuse is a water cooled head gasket. All you people out there saying the crush the crush? It crushed it once didnt it? Why won't it crush again?

In reality, head gaskets MUST "crush again" because they need a second torquing after they run in. I figured the reuse torque was just like a second torque anyway.