Triumph Repair: Oil Pan Gasket and Other, digital micrometer, pan gasket

Question
Howard,

Today I received a number of ordered items from Victoria British.  Amongst those items ordered was an oil pan gasket for my '74 Spitfire.  The gasket, if one can call it that, is of a thickness of less than 1/32", and made of paper.  I measured the thickness with a digital micrometer.

ALL oil pan gaskets I have seen are much thicker and made of a cork type substance.

Have you ever seen a gasket for an oil pan such as this?

One other question, if I may.  In my order from Victoria British, was 14, male pieces of the snaps for the top and cover.  Have you ever seen snaps made of PLASTIC?  Who would assume the snaps ordered would not be stainless steel?

Depending on your reply, it appears Victoria British may have unloaded some cheap material on me.  Now, I'm worried about the quality of the piston rings and rod bearings they sent.

May I thank you, in advance.

Cheers,
George Mertz  

Answer
Hi George,
A thin paper gasket is ok for an alloy pan but every sheet metal pan I ever pulled were warped at each bolt hole due to the tension at each bolt compressing the gasket (usually thick as you say) If you were to replace a thick gasket with a thin one there would be gaps between the bolts. This usually does not happen with cast alloy pans but unless this car has an accessory alloy pan I would not want to use a thin paper gasket. Even the steel pans that have a reinforcement plates in the edge of the pan will still not do well with a thin gasket.

Plastic top snaps? I would be surprised if that worked very long. Most top snaps are under a lot of strain and I can't see plastic working for that application.

I have found on occasions poor quality parts from most of the parts suppliers but would not consider all their parts bad just because of a few parts. I have bought parts from Victoria British over the years and most were fine. You need to let them know when you get something like that as some purchasing agents are not good QC people.

I was a tech rep for BeckArnley/WorldParts corp. for many years and we handled some of the "Vendor Approval" and we would test many parts on cars before we would purchase a part. But some were purchased without our inspection and on occasions we got stuff in our line that did not work well. Many purchasing agents depend on the reputation of the company selling the item as they may not even have a QC department.
Howard