Looks like I made some extra work for myself here.

I already put my motor together with these gaskets and only today learned that the early 5.3 heads had the notch cast into them. I looked at the pics I took during my engine tear down and sure enough the damn heads have the notch.

Is anyone running this gasket on a set of these heads and if so are they sealing up?

I stupidly bought brand new TTY head bolts so if I end up buying another set of heads I will also be out the money for the head bolts that haven't even been run once! Aaaarrgghh!

Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions? I think the answer is that I am going to be buying another set of heads, but I am hopeful that someone will chime in and say they have used these gaskets on the notched heads and it worked fine.

 

I had mine welded up and then surfaced. Not much else you can do other than go to later model stuff. Clevite has an MLS gasket with a coating on it that will work, but I don't know how well they hold up compared to the LS9/FelPro/Cometic stuff

 

I wondered if you were going to run into any issues since the engine was so early being a '99. I didn't know what might have been a problem or I would have mentioned it. If I go LS, from what I can tell '05+ is worth the extra money.

 

Yea, you need to fix it...