Does steal seal work

General Discussion
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1

DOES STEAL SEAL WORK WHAT WILL ACTUALLY FIX A BLOWN HEAD GASKET

2

NO - I TRIED THIS PRODUCT IT DOES NOT WORK IT MAY WORK FOR 1 DAY BUT YOUR CAR WILL OVERHEAT AGAIN ITS NOT WORTH THE COST OR HEAD ACKE

3

Thanks, TONYAIO, for telling us something we already knew.

The only cure for a blown head gasket is a new head gasket. Additives are worthless.

Thanks again.

4

Stealing someone’s pet seal will not do anything for your head gasket problem.

Neither will Steel Seal, or the other products you find at Auto Zone.

I’m sorry. The Devil made me say that.
;-))

5

Do you have to be schizophrenic to answer your own question?

6

A respected regular contributor to this forum (Tester) is one of the few people I’ve heard of who has tried Steel Seal and has had some luck with it. Without any details about exactly how his head gasket was leaking vs how yours is broken, it’s difficult to say if you’ll have the same luck.

In general, the odds of these “fixit in a can” products ever working are very much against you. And if you’re in the minority where they do work, the odds of them working for any length of time are against you.

The odds of them doing collateral damage to your cooling system are definitely in your favor.

7

No, but it helps.

8

Additives, including steel seal, are good for trying to squeeze some added life out of an old beater in a situation where you have nothing to lose, but do not substitute for a proper repair.

If your goal is to accomplish the former, I say go for it.
If your goal is to accomplish the latter, forget the steel seal and do the job properly.

9

This is my favorite stop-leak in a can story: http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=3739

I put these products firmly in the “it’s worth a shot” category-- they don’t work very often, but for as cheap as they are and for as expensive as the alternative is, why not?

It seems like most car guys I know have at least one story of some miracle product actually working-- I had an old dodge truck with a slipping transmission that a miracle ATF product mostly cleared up.