OK, my friend w the shop and water cutter will do it! Still not cheap -- $80 - $100 for each cut run (per gasket) plus materials. So it's an expensive gasket. he's a good hot rodder, and suggests that other materials might be better, and all of them if thick enough could be cut for viton O-rings etc around water, oil, chamber, etc. I thought of copper because of the heat transfer, but I have no way of knowing if it will move enoug heat to lower the differences in expansion. It might be that good studs, correct lube is enough. he also suggested relieving around the studs to compensate for pulling around them. I thought of this too and will ask my machinist about it. . i wonder how much of the wear on your bearings, and the reason i lost mine, was due to the new oil. someone > correct > me if im wrong. but wasnt the old oil made to drop any contaminants to the > bottom of the pan, but this new oil is made to hold it to get filtered out? > Yeah, who knows... I ran detergent oil, probably it wasn't a good idea. It probabl ywas somewwhat gritty. But my guess is, the generally crappy care ALL of these cars got when they entered the 'twilight zone' (the 'that old thing out behind the garage what sat 5 years') is what did them in. Frequent oil changes and good care would probably have left them in decent condition. makes sense to me. if you get to your full flow oil filter before i do, pics > would be great. and vice versa. ill post pics of mine if i do it before > you. > I'm doing mine ASAP, it's not going back in the car partial-flow, and I want it driving by March. >> i think you and i are going to start leading the way on "improving" (as if >> theres much we CAN do) on these 196 motors. HA HA. dave stohler No one else seems foolish enough to do it! There's not many available American production motors out there as ignored or unknown as this one! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://list.amc-list.com/pipermail/amc-list-amc-list.com/attachments/20100202/74e3d207/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ AMC-list mailing list AMC-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://list.amc-list.com/listinfo.cgi/amc-list-amc-list.com