What did you think of this sample size of one teardown? I thought the pistons / grooves should be a bit cleaner, wonder what oil they ran? Yeah, I know it had 200,000+ miles, but it isn't a diesel, either. Wonder if they used top tier gas only?
The modern multi-laminate head gaskets do about as good a job as they can for dissimilar metal engines - at least it's not failure @ 60,000 miles like the old pure elastomer gaskets did. This might be the end of iron block / aluminum head engines anyway. Wife's and son's engines are all aluminum, they seem to be holding up ok. No leaks or cracks (yet). The stiffening webs on an aluminum block are huge.