Head gasket installed without dowel pins…

Soooooo this happened…. I’m doing my my first rebuild on my 2003 5.4 2v. After getting my short block and heads back from the machine shop I went ahead with the assembly my engine and dropped it on into the engine bay and realized only after that I never installed the dowels into the block before lining up and installing the heads.

I know, I’ll pause here so everyone can have a good laugh….‍

Ok, now that that’s over. I need some guidance and i am fairly certain about the feedback, but I thought I would get some insight as the lack thereof is why I may be in this position in the first place.

All of the bolts lined up fairly easy and I torqued every bolt down in the correct order and angle torqued all the bolts in the correct order. My question is, if I pull the heads off and the gasket is not rolled or twisted in any way would the be any ability to reuse them. They are victor Reinz MLS and getting replacements is going to cost me about a week and another $120-$150 bucks. If I pull them and it looks like they were compressed in the right places if I completely lucked out and nailed the line up without the pins would anyone recommend reusing them?

Thanks for any info or advice.

I wouldn’t take the chance and would replace the gaskets. I’ve built a lot of different kind of engines and the reason to feel that way is because there is a firing ring that compresses and deforms on most MLS gaskets especially near the bores of the cylinders. Once it deforms to fit when torqued, it’s never the same when re used. Second reason is MLS gaskets have a slight thin coating to seal the oil and coolant passages between the head and block. That’s going to be compromised as well. Sorry for the bad news but rather see you do it right and happy with it for many years to come.