both the intake or head gasket failing can cause rough running. yes gaskets can only be used once, most valve cover gaskets can be reused but if damaged in any way they need replaced, sometimes damage can be if its been over tightened. you will want to look for where the issue is, identify the problem. i did a head gasket, head rebuild and still had the same issue with a van i had back in the 80s, found out from the guy i sold it to the block was cracked low in the cylinder wall so i could not see it did not show on compression test.

 

Well, I'll be having someone do a compression test and make sure nothing else is fried on the engine, but I'm pretty sure that's all that it has wrong. I added more oil in it, took out the t-stat and besides the overheating thing, the engine doesn't show to have any issues. It runs as it normally did before this all happened to it, but better be safe than sorry.

Is the Fel-Pro HS9917PT2 kit the best one, or is there one I should be aware of that has a better design?

 

Do you know of a way to tell if its a blown head gasket, cracked head or a cracked block? I don't at lease with out a completer tear down and magnaflux, In school they told us all you can do is pull the heads and look for signs of a blown head gaskets. If if the head gasket was not blown and heads come back after testing for cracks are good then it is assumed cracked block.

Cracked normally only happen with extreme over heating (normally combined with the motor shutting down) or extreme cooled with not enough antifreeze.

Once you know you have a leak it can be very tuff to find a "second" leak because the normally pressure test does not work. He can go out and buy the gas tester kit but that is $80 and if that reported no head gasket leaks I would still recommend replacing the head gaskets just because they are known weak spots and just because its good today does not mean once the car gets to full pressure (something it has not seen in awhile) in the coolant system it will not blow then.

Once you have repaired known leaks finding "other" in the case of your Van a pressure test after the head gasket job was done would have told you the engine block was cracked. In fact that is the way most cracked engine blocks are found, after the head gaskets have been done. The head gaskets or cracked block has to be pretty bad to show up on a compression test. In most cases if its bad enough to show up on a compression test you can tell by the plug it is blown. The plug will be clean compared to the others and may even have a green/orange tint to it. I have seen plugs that had slight green tint and had fine compression and showed up are a pressure test plain as can be.