Intake Manifold Gasket - Where Did You Go?

Ratty didn't want to fire up this morning. He's been getting better and better the more I ride it, and has been kicking over on the first kick, so I knew something was up. It needed a lot of choke to start, and then was acting pretty strange under part throttle, and didn't want to idle smoothly. After resting my right leg, I noticed something. Part of the intake manifold gasket (between manifold and the cylinder head) was sticking out not looking very gaskety anymore.

Sure enough, it was mangled. It was pretty much ripped in half, and fell apart when I took the manifold off. This gasket was paper thin (came with the engine kit) so I'm not surprised it didn't last. I have some high-temp sheet gasket I bought from NAPA last year for Salty, so I made a pair of new gaskets. One for the bike, one for the parts bin.

Mangled gasket on the left, gasket sheet material on the right:


New gasket cut out:


And installed. And yes, I left it a tick oversize on the OD to give it more meat, since the stock gasket ripped at its thinnest point:


I also used lock-tite on the bolts, as I think they worked loose since first installed, possibly leading to the gasket ripping.

C'