Can I reuse an old head gasket on my 94 Honda Magna 750? Yes I did

This is a short video that shows how I went about reusing the head gasket on one of the heads on my Honda Magna 750. I had a sparkplug hole strip out from the soft aluminum and a possible misthread that eventually ate the treads up until the sparkplug would no longer tighten up. So I removed that head and I tapped up twice to get from a 10mm thread diameter to the next size up in available thread diameter which was 12 mm. All the other attributes of the new plug matched the plug that was originally in there. A D93A champion plug was the plug I settled on for that. I just took the hole up to that size with two taps, each one progressively went bigger to the desired 12mm. Then the head gasket issue. I tried cleaning as is the old gasket with RTV gasket sealer but it didn't hold and an oil leak was immediately there. Its the rivets holding the three layers of the gasket that caused the issue because of not being able to get in between them. So I took it back apart and this time I removed the rivets and then separated the three leaves of the gasket. I made a note of exactly how they came apart. The word (up) can be seen on the outer two. The center gasket was made of a partially malleable metal that reminded me of lead but not as soft, an alloy maybe. I cleaned all of them with 1500 grit sandpaper and then sprayed both sides with copper gasket dressing sealant. I used my toaster oven to dry each side for about 2 mins each before spraying the backs then I dried those sides the same way, this I don't think was necessary however . I didn't re-rivet the gaskets because there were dowel pins on the engine block to hold them in place so I stacked them together first and pressed them together with my hands, because they stay kind of tacky when dry, then I put them on the cleaned engine block surface then I mounted the head to the block. I slowly tightened the head bolts a little at a time to ensure an even push down starting from the inside bolts working to the outside bolts. I took about 5 successions till I reached the proper torque. I reassembled the bike and fired it up. Not a single leak and compression was superb. It took a few hours of labour and $13 for the copper spray gasket sealer. It worked as good or better than the original gasket had before I needed to reuse it. So if your question is can you reuse an old head gasket the answer is yes if its not broken in any way. It did cost me more in labour if I was paid to do it and the replacement gasket, if new, would have been $50. So if you have the money just replace the head gasket but if you don't or just want to try your skill then this method works flawlessly. Thanks to the helpful advice of Magna Matt, my boss and mentor mechanic I was able to make an educated attempt at something that even he recommended against doing but as he stood by my decision I had a big task to try and failure was not an option. It worked for those reasons, the lesson, attention to detail in every step and confidence is key. Video made and produced by Kdot Matrix an American entity.

Видео Can I reuse an old head gasket on my 94 Honda Magna 750? Yes I did автора Хонда-игровой мир