No valve cover gasket, yet no leak!

[Nded]

I swapped out my 1600 valve cover today and discovered that the old cover was in place without a gasjet of any sort. Amazingly there were never any oil leaks. Is this a common practice? I put my new cleaned up cover on with a gasket of course.

[redroadster]

No silicon RTV ? they came out with hilowmar ( least the name I remember it as ) that was almost like thread locker fluid ,I saw used on by Mercedes and VW ,used it on their front covers or small covers ,that's almost nothing, some was blue but it can be clear
Maybe its not oiling

[Nded]

Nothing at all. Just smooth metal on the top of the head and the bottom over the cover. I laid the cork gasket on top of the head and finished the job.

[GeoffM]

A very good tip I learned from someone here is to glue the gasket, with Aviation form a gasket, to the cover so that when you have to do maintenance to the top end, you don’t have to replace the cork gasket.