Gave the car to sonny (now 17) about 12 months ago. It’s not the same anymore, but who is? It runs poorly. I took some carb spray around the injectors and the car smoothed out. I figured I needed new o-rings on the injectors (original with 368k miles) so I went in to change them. Low and behold the intake gasket on 2 and 3 has a huge gap on top (I would have never seen it on bottom) about ¼” long. The broken ends of the gasket face out, not in, and I am wondering if this was some sort of some blow back pressure thing. That is why I am writing.

But here is some history. I did the head gasket 11 months ago and rebuilt the head (btw…it needed nothing…it was almost perfectly in spec and the valves and guides were fine….little or no warpage….so much easier to do than I expected). The reason I mention this is that I used an Elring head gasket kit, and their intake manifold gasket. I kept the old one, which was OEM from the dealer. It had been replaced in 2004 with 240k miles when the original factory gasket failed. I figured it made sense to use the new one from the kit. Now I am not so sure, and I am about to put the OEM back in. The Elring failed in 10k miles and 12 months.

I am tempted to pass judgment on the Elring component as sub-par. Comments?
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I'm stuck on Volvo and Volvo's stuck on me....