Is the cyl head gasket set for a 1998 AU 4 litre 6 ok to use on a 1996 EFII XR6 head?

Cheers.
Bruce.

Yep. The AU has the Multi-Layer Steel (MLS) gasket, which is far superior to the EF's composite gasket. It solves the E-series's bad habit of blowing head gaskets. It is also much thinner, so you will get a small increase in compression ratio - which tends to help power and economy. I put one in my EF over five years ago, and no problems since.

One warning, though: As the gasket is much thinner and harder, it has less "give", so the head surface must be dead flat. Get your head lightly skimmed to guarantee a good seal. You can skim a bit more if you want higher compression, but you may need to use 95+ octane fuel exclusively.

this!!!!!!


the only issue with too much head skimming you may run into clearance issue with the valves and pistons!

There is a limit to how much you can safely skim. The head may already have been skimmed at some point. Any decent head shop will be able to check, as there are pads moulded into the head to measure from. I have taken 15 thou (.015") off the head on my EF, which is not much. Others have taken way more off without notching the pistons for valve clearance.

Thank you both for your helpful information.

I planned to have the head crack tested so I can get the, "Headmaster" a specialist machine shop here in town, to do a skim or at least check that a skim is necessary or not. I'm not sure, but I understand that the head I have was removed from a Fairlane or an LTD but it does have the tell-tale "T" at one end of the head.

The top end gasket set that I plan to buy to get the AU head gasket also includes gaskets for the exhaust, inlet manifolds, rocker cover gasket and several smaller gaskets for various things but all together in the set is labelled for an AU head, Soooo, will these gaskets in the AU set also work on my EFII Tickford/XR head or will I need to buy the AU head gasket and the EF set separately - if all that makes sense?

Cheers.
Bruce.

the gasket set will be fine the only thing that will not fit if it is included would be the valve stem seals as they are different e series - au
the head will need to be skimmed for the MLS gasket

You'll have to make sure the block is in excellent condition, especially where the fire ring sits on the block.
As you can see in this photo, that I had used a sanding block with wet n dry on it to try to remove as much as possible of the pitting where the fire ring sat before....this pitted surface will be no good for an MLS gasket.
A composite gasket was used here, and no problems were encountered after that for some time.

 

 

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Thanks again for the additional and nessesary information - I hadn't been aware of these things before so what you've told me here is golden.

Cheers. Bruce.