Head Gasket

I have a 1990 cherokee with a 4.0L I believe the head gasket is blown and I was wondering if one brand is better than the other. Can I just buy one at napa or should I try to get one from the dealer. Anyone have any part numbers because every dealer I have tried to use in the past has not been much help. Thanks Danny

Danny, in my experiance, it is always better to replace anythign with factory parts. In automotive stuff, you serously get what you pay for. hope that was some help.

Peace
ted

Personaly felpro gaskets have always worked great for me, got a felpro head gasket on my 96 xj now 40.000 miles later no problems at all! but thats just me, btw IDK if you know this or not but always make sure the head and block mating surfaces are not cracked and are completely flat, a warped head can imitate a bad headgasket sooooo just a little FYI there. Good luck dude!

Concur.

A Fel-Pro or a Victor/Reinz head gasket should not cause any trouble for you.

However, while you've got the head off, you'll want to check the mating surfaces of the cylinder head and engine block for flatness - as I recall, it's not more than .001"/6" longwise or not more than .001" across the width, "on the flat."

Check with a straightedge and a feeler gage - the better the grind on the straightedge, the better (You can buy purpose-made straightedges from outfits like B-H-J Precision, or you can use something like a 2-4-6 block or a machinist's parallel which should cost significantly less. I'd suggest the dedicated straightedge only if you build more than a few engines a year...)

JCwhitney has an extremely cheap Crown head gasket set with valve stem seals, misc gaskets, valve cover gaskets, and I got one. I'll install it tomorrow and let you know how it goes.

Felpro 9076 PT1 on Rock Auto.com is the standard gasket
Felpro 530SD is a "severe duty" gasket. Believe this has more steel reinforcing such as a ring around the cylinder.
Victor Reinz 5713 (or CS-5713 is slightly thinner, supposedly .043 vs. about .051) Checker/Kragen/xxx was able to get this last one in a day.

If you aren't trying to raise compression or otherwise fool with quench height or similar it's probalby best to stick with something like the standard or severe duty.
Rockauto has a head gasket kit for 68.79 that includes the standard head gasket, intake/exhaust gasket, valve cover gasket, valve cover bolt hole gromets, throttle body gasket and thermostat housing gasket.

If you do get your head and/or block milled to correct warp get the numbers from the shop and evaluate lifter preload. There's a lot of whoo ha going on about oil additives and premature cam failures. I wouldn't be surprised to find that some number of those were situations where they didn't pay attention to lifter preload increases due to head or block milling.

Thanks for the information. Danny