I am working on porting plenum and runners trying to siamese them. My first step to cut out the gasket to gasket match the tubes. I am using stock gaskets. The metal in the gasket prevents me from using a razorblade. I tried clamping the bracket to the runners and using a carbide grinding tip to massage them open, this kept snagging on the inner metal and then ripped the gasket. I then tried using more of a grinding/sanding stone on the air gun this seemed to push the gasket out of the way and gave me loose edges with burrs in the gasket. I tried a jigsaw next and that didn't go well.

So how the he!! are you guys pulling this off. Do I need different gaskets. I have seen where someone made there own gasket out of cork type gasket material, is there a certain brand (I.E. SLP, TPIS) that has a gasket that is made more to be worked with? Those who have done this please give me your experience.

Oh yeah one more thing, i don't understand why there needs to be a metal reinforced gasket for this application can anyone explain that.

 

I used side cutters to snip my gaskets out for the SLP runners. A few snips to round it out a bit and viola! Took maybe a few seconds per gasket.

The metal is there to keep the paper from ripping or from pushing out of the joint when the parts are bolted together. It's a very common type of gasket.

 

Dremel cut off wheel works good. So would tin snips

 

I like the dremel cutoff wheel idea that would probably work good. Do the tin snips leave a clean edge?

 

Depends on how sharp your tin snips are. My side cutters left so clean of an edge that I didn't even realize there was metal inside on the first couple of ones I did.

 

I used scissors and they worked really well.

 

I made new gaskets. my ports are so large the there was no way metal gaskets would work. I used rubber fiber material. it was easy to make everything exact.

 

i also used tin snips.