Some years ago I had to take the thermostat housing off the MG. I think it was when I had to replace the vacuum line to the distributor, and there's a clip that's held under one thermostat bolt. The bolts were sticky, so I backed them out, cleaned them up, put some anti-seize on them. Didn't have a new gasket handy, but I had some gasket paper lying around. Cut a new one out, good to go, right?
Until last week when I noticed it was oozing noticeable amounts of coolant around the thermostat and had made puddles in the garage. My usual supplier was closed because our current situation, but Autozone thankfully had a new Fel-Pro gasket in stock just down the road, for a mere $2.39. This one was much thicker than the paper I used. Getting the housing apart, the old one had pretty much disintegrated. While I've grown a little leary of the accuracy of AZ parts for the MG, it was a perfect fit. Too bad the bolts got pretty sticky again, and were fouled with corrosion since it oozed into the bolt holes too.
Now if only I had bothered to look up AZ back then and found out they were readily available; it still would have saved the $10 minimum order from my supplier and might have saved the aggravation later.
Until last week when I noticed it was oozing noticeable amounts of coolant around the thermostat and had made puddles in the garage. My usual supplier was closed because our current situation, but Autozone thankfully had a new Fel-Pro gasket in stock just down the road, for a mere $2.39. This one was much thicker than the paper I used. Getting the housing apart, the old one had pretty much disintegrated. While I've grown a little leary of the accuracy of AZ parts for the MG, it was a perfect fit. Too bad the bolts got pretty sticky again, and were fouled with corrosion since it oozed into the bolt holes too.
Now if only I had bothered to look up AZ back then and found out they were readily available; it still would have saved the $10 minimum order from my supplier and might have saved the aggravation later.