Pulled the accessories, front grill, etc. Pulled the head, pulled the lifters out. #5 intake lifter was destroyed. A hole basically clean through it and the cam side was actually ground at a pretty good angle. The other 11 looked beautiful. Pulled the cam out. No scoring on any of the journals, #5 lobe was trashed, all 11 other lobes were perfect.
So, with that said and all of the other research I've done, I've really lost a lot of trust in my motor. Maybe my build was off, maybe it was just a bad $5 lifter, but regardless, I'm not going to dump a ton of money back into it. My header (cheap, "accordion" style) is cracked, again. I was going to put a Borla on it, but going back to not trusting the motor.. That $480 Borla header basically buys me a 5.3L GM LM7 dropout.
I already have a 68-231-4 CompCam that I'm going to throw in it (it was from the original build, I neglected to realize at the time that I needed the old 4.2L timing kit to run the cam, so I slid the OEM bumpstick back in to get it back together. It was the middle of wheeling season after all! For the record for anyone that may search and come across this thread; the valves were stock, Mopar Performance springs, retainers and locks were used. Originally I suspected that the OEM cam may not have liked the higher spring pressure from the MP springs, but I would have expected to see some kind of wear on the other lobes of the cam, which I didn't, so I believe it was a bad lifter that wiped the cam out, not the other way around).
With my massive tangent out of the way, on to the real question;
When I originally built the motor, I ordered a full Victor Reinz gasket kit for it. Every gasket was correct, except for the intake \ exhaust gasket. Apparently, my 99 block / head is a bit of a Chrysler bastard child. The gasket that it came with fits the intake ports mostly properly, but the exhaust is way off. The holes are square or "D" shaped and actually blocks off a solid 3/8 of the bottom of the exhaust port on the head. I ran into this problem once before when I installed an aftermarket header. It came with one of those ultra cheap pressed gaskets, I didn't like it, ran up to the parts store and got a Felpro gasket for a 99 Wrangler. The one I bought didn't fit right and of course the parts store was closed. So I used the cheap one that actually fit properly.
On this build, same deal. The VR gasket (stamped 17941S) covers up the exhaust ports. I ended up with a Felpro MS94970. It has round exhaust holes that don't restrict the exhaust ports. According to Rock Auto, that gasket is used on 91-98 4.0L motors. Doing a little detective work, I pulled up the P\N for a 1998 Victor Reinz exhaust manifold; MS16120. A Google image search shows the MS16120 looks just like the Felpro MS94970. The P\N reported for a 1999 Victor Reinz gasket is MS16315, Google shows that as being the "square" holed gasket that my kit came with.
The Victor gasket is a MLS gasket, with the intake portion being a single layer of steel. The exhaust portion of the gasket is made up of two layers of steel. Each section is cut to fit around the other and riveted to each other. Each of the intake and exhaust ports are "beaded", IE they have a ridge that runs around them. The Felpro gasket is a steel core with some sort of fiber laminate on each side. I have always had bad luck with exhaust leaks, both at the header as well as at the gasket on my 6cyl Jeeps. Even after following careful FSM torque procedures, they still leak. My question is, what gasket type do you prefer for intake and exhaust? The multi layer steel Victor gasket, or the fiber laminated Felpro? I'm ordering a full gasket kit, again for my rebuild and I have to order the intake /exhaust gasket separately, so I can go either way. Opinions?
Pictures make everything better, right?
Felpro MS94970 (91-98 4.0L, also 99 in my case)
Victor Reinz MS16120 (91-98 4.0L, again also 99 in my case)
Victor Reinz MS16315 (99-06 4.0L, does not fit my 99. You can see how much higher the exhaust ports sit vs that of 91-98 gasket ports)
(Sorry for all of the extra info for such a simple question, but I thought it might come in handy for someone searching in the future)
