I had a cometics head gasket installed 2 weeks ago. Ive heard a lot of people since i got mine say that they keep blowing them or have heard of them being blown. i havent had a problem yet with it, i know they are fairly new, but how many people are running them and how have they held up. Ive ran the truck fairly hard like before and it goes great

 

just make sure you stay on top of re-torquing the head studs. I too am watching these cometic gaskets and I think a lot of it comes from needing a retorque or two or three or more...

 

That is what some have said. tighten it 3 or 4 more times after installation and then periodically there after. I did this as "preventative" maintenance since my stock gasket was not leaking and I didnt want to be at a pull and blow it. the shop said this would be a good alternative to o-rings. I trust them cause they are good friends of mine. I hope I did the right thing. does anyone else have or heard of anyone having one of these?

 

On Comp. Diesel forum, there have been several that have run, and most have blown it seems. Ratsun had a fully prepped head and block, studs, retorqued them and it still did not last all that long. I've got one in the basement. I'm thinking I'm gonna send it back and just go with o-rings.

 

I put an mls in my '02 and it blew before I even had a chance to do a retorque. I'm sending the gasket back to Cometic for them to check it out; maybe I'll get warranty on it.

 

I know Adam @ WINspeed used one on his 990 HP 01 24v and blew it. Hes o-ringed now.

 

dang I was hoping for a cheap good alternative to machine work and O rings. hopefully they can get it right soon

 

A question I have about the popped cometic gaskets is, was the head finished to the cometic spec before it was installed? apparently a lot of shops dont have the tooling to finish that fine a surface.

 

I surfaced it myself. 50RA on a Rottler.

 

Hmm.. that kills that idea. I cant think of anything else that would make them pop besides finish and runout of the head and block. When I do mine it will be o-rings unless they have the kinks worked out by then.

 

I am using a Scheid MLS type gasket with steel o-rings dropped into place, so far so good.

 

Scheid has a MLS gasket? Do they list any differences between theirs and the cometic? Im real curious how that holds up.

 

Scheid had the MLS out before COMETIC. I inquired about it 3-4 months ago. Scheid said the only way it would hold the boost and if I wanted anykind of a guarantee, I had to use the 14mm studs. This is why I didnt go with it. To labor intensive.
If you look back at some of my posts I had asked on here why would you need the 14s instead of the 12s and no one really had any answers.
Scheid wouldnt even sell me the gasket unless I bought the 14mm studs with it.

 

Here is the thread I started awhile back. It seems people were having problems with Scheids MLS also.
https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...d.php?t=167986

 

The sales rep. from Cometic unofficially said you need to surface both the block and head for the mls to work, even if the block meets Cummins' specs. The metal gasket just isn't forgiving when it comes to imperfections.