Some gasket material, especially the tan Fel-Pro Karrapak is pretty hard even when new. I do think that it gets harder as it ages. Rather than water, maybe try “wetting” with light oil… especially since your gasket is heading for service in oil environment.
Joe B
I was thinking of that, maybe some warm oil……When I was first starting out, an old time OMC mechanic told me the trick of coating those types of gaskets with oil, before assembly, for easy future removal. It has always seemed to work good for me; so I’d be putting some oil on them, anyway. I sure would like to just throw one in a hot oil change bucket but then I’d just be loading the gasket with contaminates…..
Long live American manufacturing!
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