Silicone Gaskets

[mcfatty1000]

Had a quick search but couldn't see anything on it, what do people think about silicone gaskets?
I took the manifold off my car the other day to swap the injectors out, went through two steel gaskets that had also been silicone gasketed as well (Same seams).

Long story short, have a large air leak somewhere so will most likely end up doing the while thing again to find out where from; should I be siliconing the steel gaskets back down? I didn't bother the first time, just scraped as much as I could off and used the steel ones only.

Worth it?

And yeah, also going to replace the injector seals and the throttle body paper gasket at the same time, to eliminate those as potential leaks

[loudstealthGT-Four]

You shouldn't use silicone on those gaskets as they are designed to seal two flat surfaces. It is also not recommended to re-use that type of gasket, although it is possible to do so if they are good nick.

But givin your description if the gaskets, id just replace them. To save any hassles.

Also make sure you scrap off all of the silicone otherwise it will ruin the mating surface and possibly cause an air leak.

[mcfatty1000]

Yeah, I wasn't the one who did it, I'll have to do a proper clean of them then

[Emperor]

On the intake side, you can use Loctite 518 as a gasket helper or full gasket. My RX7s just using 518 on all the intake flanges. But if you can help it, use the proper gasket.

Just don't use silicone with a multi layer steel gasket. When my old Euro R had its new motor put in, the exhaust gasket was a multi layer steel that was port matched to the head and extractors, and then they went and filled it with gasket goo (through all the layers). Epic fail.