Exhaust gasket substitute study

[Khalil Brooks]

I recently blew my exhaust gasket and in place of a fresh one I fashioned a gasket from cardstock I had laying around the house. I cut out 4 of them to try and make it near as thick as the normal gasket. Everything seems to function as normal after about 20-30 minutes of operation. There doesn’t seem to be any leaking from the gasket (felt around the area with my hand) so I’m curious to see how it will handle the heat.


I plan to update this thread with how this goes for anyone else who’s curious, so prod me for updates if it’s been too long.

 

[Tony01]

No, man. Already answered this for you. Read why in the other thread. Don’t build your bike to fail.

 

[Khalil Brooks]

I’m definitely gonna be replacing it, I haven’t run the engine like this more than a few minutes considering it’s the layers are likely to pose an issue. It’s my only way to work and the shipping needs longer than I have, thas why I decided to give this thing a go

 

[FOG]

I used to glue headers on my Pinto motors with high temp silicon. It's the copper colored stuff. Super easy to clean up and never had a problem. They were 2" headers and the stock gaskets were way too small in that they didn't reach the outside of the header. I musta glued them on 50 times ....

I was 49 y/o in this pic, but I sure felt like a kid.

 

[Khalil Brooks]

I used to glue headers on my Pinto motors with high temp silicon. It's the copper colored stuff. Super easy to clean up and never had a problem. They were 2" headers and the stock gaskets were way too small in that they didn't reach the outside of the header. I musta glued them on 50 times ....

I was 49 y/o in this pic, but I sure felt like a kid.

View attachment 104788

I’d considered using silicone too. I read in a couple places that gas eats through and messes up silicone and I wasn’t sure if 2 stroke exhaust had too much gas to allow a silicone gasket......thoughts?

 

[Khalil Brooks]

The gasket has seemed to hold up well after maybe 60 miles. It doesn’t seem to be compromised

 

[Bikeguy Joe]

High temp silicone won't be "eaten" by the oily exhaust residue, there's not much fuel left in it.

 

[Khalil Brooks]

After 60-70 miles of mostly wide open throttle, the card stock gasket began to turn brown and I could smell faint smoldering that wasn’t oil or gas. I bought some “hi-temp gasket material”. My hardware store only had non-asbestos material so I cut out two from the sheet and replaced it.