Burning oil

[classical glass]

Hi all, customer delivered his Factory Five car to our shop this week with complaints of excessive oil usage. We totally looked over the car with no apparent signs of any major leak. He clames he is using 1 quart per 1K miles ( that's a lot) driving down the road no signs at all of any blue smoke, however upon start up it smokes (blue) for about 2 min then lets up. He had a compression checked my a reputable local Ford dealer and they said everything looked fine the problem is somewhere else. I don't have the results at the moment. We removed the intake and right away we saw what might be the problem. Both sides of the intake manifold gaskets were disintegrating, oil soaked and looked like old cardboard. Now these gaskets are black in color and we were told this type of gasket was not suitable for street use, racing only. This to me didn't sound right, so we are replacing them with Fel-Pro one and hope this will take of the problem. While we had it apart we decided to have the heads checked and reworked.....good thing.
They needed everything, from guides to harden seats. My question does this intake gasket theory sound right? I think this was one of many issues.
Thanks

[blykins]

Intake gasket failure is number one cause for oil use on an FE.

[FWB]

and the "felpro one" you replaced it with is which one?

[Tom Wells]

classical,

The Fel-Pro Print-O-Seal gaskets had no shim steel reinforcement, they therefore got the nickname "Fail-Pro Print-O-Leak."

The problem arises after a number of heat cycles on a street engine some parts of the gasket creep away, creating an opening between the intake and the head. If you were lucky, it was a vacuum leak; if you were not, it was a coolant leak into the engine. Race engines didn't have that problem because their intake gaskets were replaced regularly - not so for the street engines.

Here's a thread describing and picturing one such failure: 390 problems | Capital Area Cobra Club

We have experienced these failures on all kinds of common Cobra powerplants including FEs, 385s, 289s, 351s, you name it.

After we cornered the Fel-Pro tech guy at a PRI show some years ago, they switched to a steel shim reinforced design which seems to have cured that problem. I understand the steel reinforced gasket has a "S" suffix to identify it. I still prefer the Victor Reinz...

Tom

[classical glass]

Originally Posted by FWB

and the "felpro one" you replaced it with is which one?

Fel-pro 90145

[PeteF]

I had this same problem on a 351W with the black FelPro gaskets. And, they were steel reinforced with a very thin sheet of steel. I replaced with Cometic gaskets, which use Victor Reinz material and no problems since.

[Joey.S]

Hi,

What about the Edlebrock 7224 intake gaskets? I just bought one of there manifolds and was told to use that gasket. I hope I didn't make a mistake.

Joey.S

[blykins]

The 90145 is fine. The Mr. Gasket 202A is fine too.

Use silicone on both sides of the gasket.

[classical glass]

Ok, got it. Thanks all very helpful.