Need some help/ advice. First time DS motor rebuild Planning on doing a piston swap and race head install soon. I have everything I need but the new head nuts and the gaskets. Which head gasket is recomended ?? Thinking of the Cometic MLS but which thickness and should I use sealer or not ?? The DS should come alive with the new piston supposed to be a 100mm stock bore 11:1 it was made by Ross Racing. Won it on e-bay from countryjoeglass? anyone got any info on this piston or maker. Have new ring set, pin, and clips for it. The head is my from ride partner was ported and "squished" by tvi along with shim under buckets and Web cams. Gonna have the intake port matched before install. Any way any TRICKS or THINGS TO BE AWARE OF during breakdown or install??? got the part about grinding the frame tilt the motor, the tdc bolt, and the string on the timing chain so its not lost in the bottom end. Any thing else??[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img][img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img][img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif[/img][img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

 

stock head gasket, it has its own coating on it from factory, use no sealer, perfectly clean surfaces cleaned with alcohol, put it together dry and torque to spec with your new nuts. this works perfectly fine for compressions higher than what you are going with too.

no need to grind anything, no need to remove motor mounts or tilt motor IMO either, I just remove the bolted top motor mount and use a long screwdriver to gently pry the head forward, the stay bolts will easily flex just enough to get clearance to slip the head off past the frame, and no integrity of stay bolts is compromised. more people do this than actually admit it and its really no biggie.

when you adjust your valve clearance you may run into issues finding correct shims using that Web shim under kit, I know I did. but fear not, you can take your shims to a local machine shop and have them ground to whatever exact thickness you need, my machine shop actually charges less to do this than new shims cost. the buckets that came in my Web kit were thicker than the stocker on the top, requiring a thinner shim as a result, and the thinnest shim available was like .006 thicker than what I needed, so I had shims ground as apposed to pulling head back apart to remove a few thousandths from the valve stem length. Web blamed it on valve seat wear, but my motor was practically new had no valve wear at all and in fact I was still running the stock shims with correct gap before I ever took it apart to install the new stuff.

 

With the squished head & the 11:1 piston,it would be a good idea the check the piston to valve clearance. Bending valves gets costly.