200 head gasket

What's a good head gasket for a 200?

I like the Victor head gasket. It is .004" thinner when compressed & seems to weep less on the drivers side of the engine. It is sold at Advance Auto Parts & Carquest.Bill

Is the weeping on the drivers side a common problem? How much should I tolerate?

Till it starts dripping at the engine pan flange. Its fixable but requires o'rings in a machined counterbore in the block.
There is a post about 6 years ago about this topic.

Every 200 weeps there. As we all learned from the guy's post, it has to do with the differential cooling and expansion of the fat and thin areas where they meet. The only way to counter it was provided by that fellow. He ran a fleet of 200s. Essentially, the answer was as Bill said, you mill a trough on both surfaces of the block and the head and seal the joint with an eccentric o-ring in addition to the gasket. Because of the special shape of the trough - square/round - it only makes sense when you have a CAD setup and need to do it to several engines. However, you can get close with a good gasket seal.

Use the 'search' function with key words 'head gasket' and 'leak' or 'sealant'. You may find the name of a good sealant or head gasket.

Thanks for the advice. I'll search for that thread. It's the first I'd it is a common problem. I thought it was just me with a bad gasket 2x in a row. I thought maybe I had created a burr when I pulled the head after purchasing the car to clean out the coolant passages. It was nasty in there.

I was pretty bummed when I saw the streaks on my nice new engine. I got used to it. I'd clean the block and respray there if I was going to put the hood up for someone. But it always came back.

I found an older reference to it (2012 era). I don't think this is my issue. I'm weeping oil, not coolant. No problems with the coolant. I've not seen oil in the coolant either (I've been watching).

I'm back to worrying if the head warped when the heater core blew shortly after I bought the car. Serves me right for taking the semi retired restorer at his word. 3 years later I'm still glad I didn't drive the car home from PA because of lack of seat belts.

I have more problems with the valve cover leaking on the driver side than the head.

The valve cover gasket was my first thought. I replaced the valve cover gasket. No joy. I then started paying a lot closer attention. I don't have the problem at idle. When I had a helper press the accelerator a bit I started seeing oil weep out the front driver side corner between the block and the head. I don't see any oil seeping down from the valve cover.

I've had the coolant weeping issue on my 250 in the past using a Felpro gasket. As long as I re-torque the head after several heat cycles it seems to have stopped. It hasn't leaked now in quite some time. Maybe I just got lucky.