after using a steel wire brush on a drill to clean off the gasket on the intake manifolds, Ive noticed that there are now some gouges and pits on the surface where the gasket goes. With the gasket be able the seal even with these imperfections?

 

i like to use a little bit of silicon, the thinking is that is helps seal up any really little potential leaks.

and back in the old days, that either let you reuse the paper gasket, or eliminate 90% of the scraping

 

Get some permatex gasket maker and add it to both sides of a NEW gasket, better safe than sorry, and the 5 bucks could potentially save u from taking off ur manifold again.

 

RTV both sides of the gasket and in the future to you and to all, be careful when using wire wheels to clean gasket surfaces as it only takes a few seconds to gouge the face of the aluminum.

 

clean the gasket mating surface with a flat sanding block and some 220 grit sandpaper and as Karack said, use RTV sealant on both sides of a new gasket.

 

i probably wouldn't sand it down any further, the surface has already been knocked down so sanding it would create even more of an uneven surface, that's just my thought on it anyways. the damage has been done, try not to make it any worse.

the only true way to fix it would be to remove the manifold from the block and remove the studs from the surface and have it planed which is a bit extreme when a little RTV works just fine, note 'little' in italics, i put it in italics because i mean a LITTLE!.

 

I've found that those black spun-plastic wheels for stripping paint, that fit in a drill ,work really well for taking off even the most tenacious gasket material, and it does no harm whatsoever to metal surfaces, not even to aluminum. They're about $6 at Home Depot. I used it on my UIM and LIM and it itook about 10 minutes on the whole job. The mating surfaces came out like new.

 

3M makes little discs called Roloc, they are awesome for cleaning gaskets off. its all I use.

 

rolocs are great and i use them alot but for $25 it isn't cheap but still well worth the investment if you ask me. i use the yellow bristle pad for cleaning just about any surface as it works great on steel, cast iron and aluminum.