Unless you’ve lived under a rock your entire life, you’ve heard of Federal Mogul and chances are that you’ve used many of their products. At this year’s PRI trade show in Orlando, we talked with the folks at Federal Mogul about the direction that the company is going with their high performance racing Head gaskets and street vehicle head gaskets.

Federal Mogul’s Marketing Manager, Ron Rotunno, talked with us about the latest in racing and street head gaskets from the century old company. “For many years we used composite gasket technology, which worked very well, but through our involvement with the NASCAR Cup teams we developed some newer technology that allowed the teams to run some different combinations and get more power out of the engines. From our experiences in the NASCAR world, we were able to spread that technology into our other marketing areas, including street cars,” explained Rotunno adding, “you could say that we used the Cup series for research and development for our sportsman racers and street drivers.”

According to Rotunno, “the newer multi layered steel (MLS) head gaskets are better designed to handle the higher horsepower, higher RPM and higher engine temps created by today’s high performance engines.”

Rotunno explained that Federal Mogul’s head gaskets are a “four layer stainless steel design, three of those layers are embossed, and the other layer is a shim layer that determines the overall thickness of the gasket.”

The highlight of Federal Mogul’s MLS gasket design is the laser welded “stopper” layer. In short, the combustion ring is laser welded to the shim layer creating a strong combustion seal. Rotunno says “this ring acts as the primary combustion seal.”

“It’s very difficult to blow a head gasket these days,” says Rotunno. Like many other MLS gaskets, Federal Mogul’s gaskets have embossed layers that act as a spring to maintain the seal when the cylinder head lifts during combustion.

Rotunno reminded us that these head gaskets were good for stock applications for the same reasons that they work well in racing applications. Simply, better performance with a high level of dependability.

From NASCAR’s highest level of racing to the streets, these gaskets are worth checking out next time you replace your head gaskets.