John, the OEM gasket was and still is a flat copper washer which is also called a crush washer also although it does not have any layers.  It is a one time use seal, it must be changed every time you remove the oil drain plug as it will only reseal properly one time from new.  These are the only oil drain plug gaskets I use and have been using them for over 20 years on my van and all of my customers vans - no problems with oil leaking if the plug is OEM and the seal is renewed each time the plug is removed and reinstalled.

On 2011-08-09, at 12:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote: 

>  I want to know just what contitutes and oil plug gasket. I started out
> in my current van - before I knew a whole lot about them - with a crush
> type copper gasket - a folded copper ring with a piece of somekind of
> crushable fiber squeezed inside. When the oil plug was tightened, this
> material wash crushed down, making for a very good seal. Several oil
> changes later, by garages and other nether places - I discovered the
> crushable had been replaced by a solid copper washer - and they called
> that an oil plug seal. Well, I beg to differ. In my experience  - and
> granted, it was in the aviation field - a crush gasket was just that -
> crushable as I described, and to be replaced at each oil change. It was
> somethign you didn't re-use. I have ordered "Oli Plug Gaskets" from list
> vendors, only to get that copper washer. Not cool! Was what I had in the
> beginning a fluke? The van was used, after all, and perhaps someone put
> that crushable gasket there in place of the copper washer - I don't
> know. But i would like to know what is properly called for and if it's
> not the copper washer, then where  do I get what is called for.

Cheers,    

Frank Condelli
Almonte, Ontario, Canada
'87 Westy & Lionel Trains (Collection for sale)
Frank Condelli & Associates - Vanagon/Vanagon Westfalia Service in the Ottawa Valley
Vanagon Stainless Steel Exhaust Systems
BusFusion a VW Camper camping event, Almonte, ON, June 09 ~ 12, 2011