The Stovebolt Forums Forums The Shop Area The Engine Shop Gasket sealers

Around the NASCAR pits, they call that stuff "gorilla snot". Among other things, some pit crews use it to glue lug nuts onto wheels for quick tire changes. The studs have an unthreaded area an inch or so long that the nut slips over as the wheel is installed. It definitely holds a gasket in place, but only use it on one side! It takes a lot of energetic scraping to get the old gasket off the next time the part is removed!
Jerry

Whether it's my rig or not, I assume I'll be the next guy that takes it apart. I usually am.

As a kid I remember my dad using something in a bottle similar to a liquid shoe polish bottle. When you unscrewed the cap it had an applicator attached. A larger cotton ball and the stuff looked like molasses. It was some type of gasket shellac if I remember correclty and had a picture of an Indian (Native American) in full head dress. similar to the Tecumseh motor logo. Working on my mini bike and scraping those gaskets off is why I am hesitant to use anything.

There is or was, might not still be in use, a sealer that's known variously as Yamabond, Hondabond and I think there's a generic. It was used on Japanese motorcycles in lieu of gaskets. When I worked in the Norton/BMW shop we discovered it could be used to seal the always leaking Norton engines (never on BMWs). When a bike came back (they always did) there was the chore of getting them apart and cleaning the xxbond off the mating surfaces. This was often 50% of the job. The leaking was mostly because of the poor design of the crankcase breather system. In desperation, I installed a VW power brake booster check valve in the hose that ran from the crankcase to the oil tank. This had the effect of evacuating the engine and creating a vacuum only offset by new blowby gasses. The leaking stopped. I had tried various PCV valves that didn't work. We stopped using xxbond. I have used this technique on various other engines with good success and wondered if I could get it to work on my 235 Chev 6, which of course leaks from the rear main seal. Sealing the engine would hopefully stop the leaks.

Indianhead Gasket Shellac. I’ve never see the stuff on shelves, but one YouTuber I watch uses it. Apparently still available.

That's it, except the bottle I remember was glass and had that stuff spilled down the sides all over the bottle. and it was a real fight to unscrew the lid.

Indian Head cured harder than woodpecker lips! Getting the cured sealer off so a new gasket could seal effectively was quite a chore. If both sides of the gasket was coated, the parts got glued together pretty firmly. It was not uncommon to bend sheet metal parts like valve covers while removing them when hardening gasket sealer had been used.
Jerry

Under what circumstances would you need a product like that? Sounds like a PITA.

JW51We used to glue manifold gaskets in place eat dinner (noon) then you could get the manifold in place pretty easy, Used weather strip adhesive on 332 352 390 you know where the intake is about half of the engine !!

dgrinnen Early indian head had like a cork with a wood knob,would dry out and go bad pretty quick.