Quote:
Originally Posted by alex87f
I was thinking more along the lines of a pre-cut silicon gasket like this for example:
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It would need to be VERY thin. Anything that is soft and has some thickness to it, is going to cause the pan to bow between the bolts, even before you hit the torque spec, and it only gets worse the tighter you go.
The upper pan mating surface is only 4mm (.156") wide. So even if you had a billet pan with machined a flange, it's not wide enough to support using an o-ring groove, and marginally wide enough to support a traditional gasket. Having designed and made Suby oil pans for over a decade, we've tested many methods of pan sealing and none are anywhere near as effective as RTV. With our thick precision machined flange, the ONLY time we use a rubber gasket or pan with an o-ring groove is for in-house testing where we put the car on the dyno, make a dozen or so pulls and the pan comes back off. It's almost always wet somewhere, even after that short of a period of time.