Metal Gasket vs Carbon Gasket

We know that there are many kinds of material to produce Cylinder Head Gasket, from the abestos material, to the non abestos material and carbon graphite material, now most of the new generation useses metal type of material, with multi layer type or single layer type.

Normally for the after market parts, factory will produce the cylinder head gasket with the same material as its OEM type of material.

But nowadays, we found a very strange things happen, which sometime the workshop request for the other type of material instead of follow the OE type.

Like most of the new model of Honda engine is come with cylinder head gasket with metal material, but the foreman is request for the abestos type or the carbon type when they want to change it.

One of the reason giving by them is, after they dismantle the cylinder head gasket from the engine, the surface at the head of the engine block may be not that smooth, so they try to machining the engine block surface to make it smooth, but after that, they OE standar type of cylinder head gasket may not thick enough to install in it, hence they might need to look for more thicker gasket.

In term of more thicker gasket, if they wish to look for the metal type with multi layer steel which make the gasket thicker, the price of the gasket may be high, and they might don't have this kind of spec in the market, hence they try to change the material type to abestos or carbon type, which it is cost more cheaper and more easy to manage on thickness. But the result on installing the diffrence material type of gasket to your engine will cause any harm or performance of your engine or not is still unknown.