I know some people do reuse their head gaskets but I never will. How many times do you want to remove your heads after you put them on? I don't ever want to.
The gasket is made to function at a specific amount of compression. After they are installed and heated and cooled through many cycles they now retain the new condition. This means that when you torque them down again they are not going to compress anywhere near as much as they did the first time. This is counter to how they are designed to function and the likelyhood of a leak is exponentially increased over using a new gasket. It's like installing gaskets that are much harder than new gaskets.
Also weigh the cost of new head gaskets vs. having to drain the coolant down, remove the intake and heads, clean up your cylinders from coolant and oil than may fall into them when you take the heads off, the cost of another intake gasket, bolting everything back on again.....
New gaskets are cheap insurance. Get new ones and sleep well. :thumb:
Steve
