The no-retorque FelPro headgasket I recently bought is missing a hole for the front water jacket opening, and also the triangular opening between cylinders 3 and 4. From the dim discoloration remaining on the block, it appears that the OEM gasket that was on the engine had these holes.

Is this a legitimate redesign?...or a manufacturing screwup? I've never noticed this on engines I rebuilt in the past, but it's been a few years...and I have a hard time recalling what I had for breakfast this morning.

The gasket should not have the holes you describe. The water must flow back through the block, up through the large transfer holes at the back, into the head and then forward and out the thermostat. If there were a hole open between the block and head right next to the water pump the flow would short circuit most of the engine.

Does the triangular hole in the block have a matching hole in the head? The only holes in the manifold side of the head and gasket should be the 6 drilled ones under the exhaust valves and ports.

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Joshua

The head has a matching triangular hole, and it also has triangular holes between 2-3 and 4-5 on the pushrod side. The block doesn't have these holes and there is no discoloration that would indicate matching holes in the gasket.

The head gasket is fine.

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Joshua

Josh has explained it all, everything is fine. The "hotter" engines I've built, I've taken a drill or a whitney punch and punched the middle holes at about 3/16" just to get some flow in the middle of the block and I do notice that during fire up that it's a bit quicker to get the air out of the cooling system instead of waiting for the t-stat to open up and 'burp', but do not notice any change in uniformity of temp or combustion variance in the middle cylinders...

It's not really necessary, so install and all is good to go.

-D.Idiot