Athena Cut-ring gaskets are garbage. Don't use them.

[bangn]

Greetings,

Just wanted to make sure that nobody makes the same mistake that I did.
I used an Athena Cut-ring head gasket on my high hp turbo stroker. Block was obviously machined, as was the head. ARP studs using ARPs torque recommendation.

1 hour on the dyno @ 6psi loading it up for run-in and this has happened.
The entire way round this gasket is leaking, its pushing through the composite. Oil on the exhaust side and coolant on the intake side. All the way along the length of the block.
The sump has coolant in it as well, lots of green through it.

Initially I had seen reports of these gaskets having issues with leaking coolant from the get go and kind of hoped if I had followed all the correct processes and torque procedure
I would be ok. Nope.

So now I have to strip off the head and get it re-machined as there are now rings embossed in my head for no reason. How is it a 30 dollar Elring gasket will seal on a surface I prepped in my garage for years but yet this gasket cant seal on a machine prepped surface. Thats terrible and ultimately could of cost me an entire engine if this went unnoticed during the run-in procedure. Do not buy an Athena Cut-Ring headgasket for your M20.

Here's the best bit. Athena have clauses that release them from providing any warranty what-so-ever.

[moatilliatta]

I don't think there is anything better than the Genuine Gasket O-ringed.

MLS seem to be a joke to, even with a mirror 30RA prep on head and block...

[Panici]

I can't speak to the M20 gasket, but I want to say I've heard rumors of M5X/S5X gaskets dropping significantly in quality in the past few years.
Guys on the Boosted E36 World facebook page? Can't recall specifically.

Perhaps they changed process or materials over at Athena?


I have one on my M52 which I purchased from CES Motorsport in Jan 2021. Fingers crossed I haven't had any issues, but I also haven't put more then 8psi into it.

I will probably do an o-ringed block on the next M5X I build.

[bangn]

I am considering doing an mls next but I won't lie that it makes me nervous. 26psi on a stock gasket I just don't feel will cut it

[Dj Buttchug]

Ive noticed the quality of stock head gaskets becoming poor as well. Some of the VictorReinz stuff feels cheap and flimsy, much worse quality than I remember from 6-10 years ago. I would say an Elring gasket would be the best to get if you are going for something stock. I looked into MLS and whatnot and after all the issues I just figured I would find a way to put a bar of boost at a stock HG on stock compression with my m5x. So many new cars are running higher compression on boost it makes you wonder...

Anyways, sucks to see that happen to you. For sure a pain in the ass to have to tear into it again.

[digger]

The flaw with the athena gasket is there are two different material in compression. if the composite parts is a bit thick then the fire ring gets clamped insufficient as the composite part limits the clamp on the fire ring. if the composite part is too thin then the composite part doesn't get clamped adequate as the fire ring takes all the load and thus oil and coolant leak. Combine that with the fact that the ring does relax/creep but composite part does so is very finicky and i dont think the accuracy on the thickness tolerance of the composite part is that good/reliable. Thus it is a literal lottery

[bangn]

You've hit the nail on the head Digger, even looking at it new out of the box the thickness of the composite compared to the thickness of the ring minus the locking step is so close and I was concerned that the ring would bottom out before it clamps the composite. Especially being stainless its pretty hard. Trust your gut as they say.

oring on a normal gasket seems odd to me, thats usually reserved for copper gaskets as you'd be biting into the fire ring on a normal gasket. Wouldn't you be better welding the water galleries instead to increase the clamp area? My last oem gasket pushed out towards number 6 water gallery at 22psi

[bangn]

So following up on this after removing the head this morning.

- No coolant in bores
- No oil in coolant system
- Lots of coolant through oil system
- Cylinder pressures were sealed by the cutrings

Head will need resurfacing due to the grooves cut by the stainless rings

this surprised me. I now have a small groove i need to level off the deck of the block. Its only really happened on one cylinder. Bit of a pissoff tbh.



The headgasket looks unmarked, no evidence of trouble spots.



Here is where things get interesting. When the head came off basically the whole deck was covered in coolant. There was no coolant in the head on removal nor was there
any coolant that had come out of the block. I drained the block to avoid contamination on removal. Headbolts studs had coolant in them, the dowels have started to rust
and the cutrings were rusting on the outside. There appears to be a sealing issue on the outer edge of the gasket





Rust on the outside of all the rings



This is where I feel the failure point was given staining observed, the rings would of taken the preload of the head and bottomed out before any real clamping was made on
the centre steam holes. From here it bled down past the headstuds and into the oil drain returns at the bottom of the head. The exhaust side of the head had oil weeping out the edge of the gasket
so there was not a good seal. It was allowing coolant in to the sump and oil out.


Pretty on the fence about an MLS at this point as now the surface condition of the block is compromised. Obviously the head can get skimmed but not the block. My gut tells me to put an an elring on it now but its such a shame given the strength
of this bottom end. How well do the MLS gaskets seal if you drill out the rivets and spray both sides with copper spray?

[moatilliatta]

Oring.

[varg]

Interesting, sorry to see you're having to deal with this, I understand the frustration of having to pull things apart after a build better than most. I'm glad I didn't go with the cut ring. When I was first planning my wagon build I was going to basically replicate Nisse Järnet 's 2.8L that's in his E30, but I decided I did not want to spend an extra $4-6,000 on making my engine do 8,000rpm, so I built a lower revving 3L instead. Nisse used a cut ring gasket, but I didn't want an inevitable head-off event to result in needing the block and head resurfaced. As a result, I have an O-ringed block and a stock head gasket on my 3L. Now I haven't run more than 15psi of boost yet, so I don't know how it'll hold up when I'm pushing 20psi+ and making more than 100hp/cyl, but so far I haven't regretted the decision. I haven't experienced any leakage that I know of from the head to block interface, but because my oil caps and valve cover kept leaking it would be hard to know for sure. What I do know is that after what happened with my M42 I probably won't use MLS again, especially on a harder to seal I6. This is the head gasket I removed from my M50 last year, showing what the o-ring wire does to it. There was no perceptible deformation of the head or block surface, just this crushed fire ring.

[bangn]

great picture thankyou for that. I will look into O-ringing it, I found last night a couple more ring grooves in the block which means the whole block is going to need blocking instead of just cleaning. These means abrasive and gunk will end up through the galleries and drains. Yuck.
Pretty certain that cutting an O ring grove will end up exactly where those indents are so there's a lot less risk there.

Thankyou for all your input

[varg]

The block can be cut for o-ringing in the car if you get the right tool to do it and plug the oil and coolant ports. Whether it will take out that mark in your deck however I do not know as I didn't do it myself and don't have measurements to do so, I paid a shop to do all of the machine work. Don't take my word for it, I just made the decision based on the aforementioned reasons and I did not measure. There are pics of my deck surface in my wagon build thread.

[moatilliatta]

David at E30 Buddies was talking about running a copper gasket with the cut ring, The Cut rings seat further into the copper allowing a better seal of the rest of the gasket. Ill be oring'ing my MLS that failed.

[TobyB]

We've been off the cutting ring gaskets for M10s for decades, now.
As Digger says, the ring prevents even compression of the composite
part of the gasket- the stock 'ring' was a cover over composite material,
so the whole thing could move a few tenths- and that was what let it stay
sealed.

O-ringing can work- but it has to be set up to work with the specific gasket
construction you choose, and I too have noticed that recent gaskets
are different than they used to be...

t

[Northern]

Late to the party but +1 to oringing the block using the isky tool and running a stock gasket.

If you need to run a copper spacer to drop compression (which should only be a 24v thing), that's the only time I'd even consider a cutring.
And if I were at that point, I'd really look into just buying correct CR pistons.