A mechanic mate of mine was telling me the other day that one place he works at a couple of days a week  does not put water in a engine that has been apart for the first start up. They let it idle for approximately 4 minutes then switch it off, let it sit over night and the next day the water/coolant is added. Presumably this cures the gaskets during the slow cool down, he claims they have never had any customers complain of leaking gasket, and never had a blown head gasket after useing this method. Any comments, any one else heard of this.  

Pete, one of the Aussie mob. Beechworth, Victoria60 F100 Panel Van, Y-block. 65 Galaxie Country Sedan 390

g'day peter

yeah ive heard of it not a very common practice now monotorque head gaskets eliminate the need ive never done it even when i was a full time mechanic i did hundreds of head gasketts without a single problem i did however do it by accident when i built the 351c in my cussy i had the dissy in not even timed was cranking it to fuel the carby & bang of she went.

moz. geelong victoria australia.

graduate 1980, bus, truck, car, hot rod, boat, submarine, hovercraft, hydrafoil, firetruck, mobile home, jet, helicopter, cruise ship, motorcycle, bicycle, santa's sleigh, clock, alloy bullbar, alloy fuel tank, lens, dr who's tardis, matter - anti matter warp drive buffer & y-block lover

Not something I’d condone especially with the new modern line of head gaskets.  If it’s going to be that borderline that running it for a few minutes without any water would make the difference between it leaking and/or blowing a gasket, then I’d be concerned anyhow.  Seeing as how camshaft breakin is so critical during the first twenty minutes of running, then shutting off the engine prematurely is going to jeopardize that.  At this point, the last time I remember a leaky head gasket on a startup was in 1968 with a 352 FE that had some steel shim head gaskets installed and that was a case where neither the heads or the decks were milled.  Replaced the gasket in that instance with a composition style gasket and simply went on without issue.  The point here is if the gasket sealing surfaces are flat and clean, then there’s no reason to be expecting any trouble if the parts are bolted up correctly and torqued to spec.

Lorena, Texas (South of Waco)