V6 Timing chain questions.

[vlad01]

I personally never heard or seen a stock one break in stock applications. Occasionally I heard this when people upgrade to bigger cams and leave all the old stock parts, but again I have not seen photo evidence of this, just written posts on old forums.

I have also read people break double row ones with bigger cams, but again, never seen any pics of this.

[Wade]

Didn’t know there was a better gasket for these. Good to know. Should of asked a week or 2 ago when I replaced mine

[vlad01]

What engine? There is bugger all choice for the older Buick, ZZP ones are for the later ecotec etc... Which are different.

Good thing is, if you can find the late type Buick gasket that was used on 93-95, they are thick and metal reinforced, they are thicker than the factory ecotec ones and about the same as the ZZP thick ones. All other gaskets for the Buick are paper and generally thin.

I actually managed to score some NOS Felpro metal shim type Buick gaskets last year and they are awesome! They basically can't leak anything, but they are super thin. Not an issue if the chain clearance is sorted via the other means.

I tried to get more of these metal Felpro gaskets, but they have gone back to paper

[Wade]

I’ve got one of my old vy ecotec’s back. Been a number of years since I was last in a holden

[vlad01]

If it's ecotec then the ZZP ones are your best bet. Genuine only ever came in paper as far as I have seen for those engines so the ZZP options are probably better.

[Wade]

They looked plastic to me. With like rubber inserts

[Wade]

Same as this

[immortality]

Yup.

Stock VN-VR (Buick 3800V6) intake gaskets are plastic with rubber inlay. Stock ecotec are the same. GM came out with a fix for this gasket issue late in the piece and produced the alloy gaskets with rubber inlay that ZZP and MACE now sell.

[vlad01]

The plastic ones have issues mainly due to poor coolant chemistry as well as lack of coolant changes. I have had brand new genuine gaskets totally fall apart after 3-4 years when using cheap coolant like the PEAK brand stuff made locally in Melbourne, and on the other end, I've had minor degradation with the original gaskets with 30+ years when the coolant was changed more often than they normally are (although still too infrequent) coupled with early use of a quality coolant like Nulon for eg.

This plastic is a fibreglass reinforced nylon blend. Nylon is very durable and chemical resistant, but it does not like acids, and that is what happens to most coolant with age, and multiple times as quick with the cheap coolant.

A cheap coolant will disturb and dissolve rust and muck in the block and goes brown right away regardless of flushes due to it chemically attacking all that, a high quality coolant is mostly inert to these substances/materials and stays clean and should stay clean past the due replacement.

So if it keeps going brown straight away, sure bet it will eat all your gaskets out in short order.

So yeah the alloy gaskets are great, but more of a bandaid for shit coolant chemistry which GM hasd class action lawsuits against their OEM Dexcool or what ever it was called, it turned highly acidic very quickly and ruined many of their customers cars, and was responsible for the issues with plastic gaskets, inserts and manifolds eating out and leaking causing all kinds of drama.