Gaskets and piston ring kits

[jjmaag]

Does anyone know what gaskets you get in the Suzuki gasket kits or the piston ring kits?
Are the Suzuki gasket kits better than the Z1 enterprises or Parts-n-more kits?

[uudfourty]

From what has been suggested time and again on this forum, OEM is the way to go. Apparently, realgasket makes good stuff, but I haven't tried any myself.

I just did an upper-end rebuild using oem gaskets and I have no leaks (yet).

Base, head and valve cover gaksets were all OEM. I used no sealants or any of that jazz.

[Bribird]

The OE gaskets sets are great, but they will cost ya. And for some bikes, at least mine...the complete gasket set has been discontinued. I ordered my set from partsnmore up in canada...its an athena kit and I have no problems as of yet.
The suzuki piston ring kits come with enough rings to do one piston.

As a rule of thumb, I always try to go with OE suzuki parts when I can.

[Nessism]

The Athena kits sold by Parts-n-more are very complete; they include all the various gaskets and O-rings you will need but not things like crankcase seals. Knock against these kits is the head gasket - Athena's fiber type head gaskets seems to have a higher failure rate than the factory gaskets for example. Some of the Athena kits use a newer style MLS type of gasket. I bought one of these kits for my 1000 rebuild - had to buy a 1000G kit (shaft drive) in order to get the MLS head gasket, the chain drive Athena 1000 kit uses a fiber head gasket for some reason (most likely the distributer is purging old stock). At any rate, the gasket kit seems to be acceptable - I bought it at the recommendation of GSR member Matchless.

The Suzuki gasket kit is very expensive and only has the basic gaskets - no O-rings or seals. Unquestioned quality is the upside of these kits though; some members swear by them.

Hope this helps and good luck.

[jjmaag]

Thanks for all the response, I would like to go with OEM, does anyone know if it comes with the valve stem seals and base o-rings?

[Nessism]

Thanks for all the response, I would like to go with OEM, does anyone know if it comes with the valve stem seals and base o-rings?

This topic has come up several times before. If you do an advanced search I'm sure you can come up with the answer from the archives.