Had some issues with my 502, namely white smoke out of the starboard exhaust and pressurized crank case causing oil to shoot out the dipstick. After tearing it down, I have been inspecting everything. I have the heads at the machine shop and they found three badly worn valve guides but no cracks or other problems. We found what we believe to be a small head gasket leak when we removed the heads. The block is a VI 502 with 14097088 heads. I have owned the boat a season and the prior owner had the motor work done. They installed the heads, a cam, and had the computer tuned. Before tear down the compression was fine and everything else has looked good but the gaskets have me confused.

From what I can tell, the head gaskets I tore off of it look to be for a Mark IV motor as I am pretty sure the Gen VI stuff only has two small water passage holes on the sides. I am by no means an expert and I have had to rely heavily on a mechanic buddy of mine so I may be mistaken.

Am I nuts or are these really the wrong gaskets? They are Felpro 1017's and as best I can tell that is for non Gen 5/6 blocks.

you are correct,,wrong head gaskets,,those are for a oring machined head and deck...if the deck and heads dont have a oring around the cylinder and head then dont use them again..use felpro 17048,,inspect your block between the cylinders,from looking at the head gasket in the pic it looks like your deck may have burn spots between the cylinders..put a straight edge between the cylinders and stick a feeler gauge under it and see how many thousands their between all of them.

This might help explain.
http://www.performanceboats.com/dyno...46-marine.html

yes that too,,sorry failed to mention that its for the older non gen v and VI..their are also 1017-1 anf 1017-2,one being a pre flattened oring which are recommended for a aluminum head..

As said, the 17048's are for the 502 Mark V/VI.

Thanks for the replies and feedback. I thought something was wrong with these. The heads did look a little warm and the machine shop owner even said they looked like they had gotten a little hot. From what I have read last night if those holes are not blocked off by the gasket it can cause some cross cooling problems resulting in some over heating in the heads. I would imagine this would at least contribute to the problems we found if not the actually cause them over time. Motor had about 100 hours or so I guess since the work had been done.