what gaskets to use with aluminum heads?

[74slnt6]

about to put on the heads, first of all its a 69 HP 440, with 440 source aluminum heads. gasket thickness does not concern me, if anything right now i have a little too much compression. should i just use any gasket with some copper coat? thats what weve always done with the stock heads and its worked fine, should i do the same with the aluminum heads? anything i should know?

 

[74slnt6]

bump

 

[Longgone]

Unless your compression is way up there you should be good with something like a Fel-Pro or MP composite gasket in the .038-40 range.

 

[Stormy69]

and DONT put anything on them. unless you come up with a steel shim gasket (old school and usually .010-.015) you should not be putting anything on todays gaskets.

 

[496dart]

There was an issue with the Stealths and gasket overhang in the chamber. Dont know if they corrected it or which heads you have.

CALL 440 source and talk to them before you buy gaskets

 

[gearjammer340]

We have used the 440 source head gaskets on two of our engines one with edebrocks and another set on our stage6 headed motor. We blew the set on the stage6 headed motor but really cant blame anything but the combo, stock shortblock pistons way in the hole the heads were milled alot when we got them so we ended up with around 10.5-1 the wrong way to achieve it and running too much timing so I'm sure you can figure out what happened, was running 11.50s like that though(in the duster) for a while lol, but it was a nothing shortblock and we knew it probably would do what it did and it did.the edelbrock headed motor is still running strong(til I took it out to adress some other driveline related issues with the 440 source headgaskets. I just took the 383 out of our duster that replace the mentioned stage6 headed motor and put in an iron headed 440 with the steel shim headgaskets and it seems good so far(just fired it up last night) didnt put anything on them. We have used copper gaskets b4 a long time ago and I think we sprayed them with something(dont remember for sure though been like 10-12 yrs since) We have used the felpros with 0 issues as well with aluminum heads.
Good luck,
Jr.

 

[bremereric]

about to put on the heads, first of all its a 69 HP 440, with 440 source aluminum heads. gasket thickness does not concern me, if anything right now i have a little too much compression. should i just use any gasket with some copper coat? thats what weve always done with the stock heads and its worked fine, should i do the same with the aluminum heads? anything i should know?

I talked with Ken at 440 Source about this same question, my friend uses the higher dollar gaskets from Felpro but I use their Blue Perma-torque gaskets with their heads. They told me that it depends on your compression ratio.
The higher dollar Felpro gaskets do overhang the combustion chambers on the heads but they also do on other heads also.
The high dollar head gaskets Fel-Pro Performance Z1009 - Fel-Pro Performance Head Gaskets, they overhang the combustion chamber.

The ones 440 Source suggested: Fel-Pro Q8553PT - Fel-Pro Head Gaskets