Oil leak Went To Georgia

[ron at bunch.org (Ron Bunch)]

Earlier part of this thread came in handy today.
After only about 260k miles on my 86 8V, my original cooler flange gasket 
just failed.
I'm not in the mood for pulling a pump this week and am going to try to get 
away with installing the metal gasket.
What's the probability of the failure being from age and not the pump valve?
(Pressure gauge is the only one I don't have yet for my 3 gauge center 
panel, so I don't know if it is high. )