Breathing new life into the 318 in the Scamp!

The gaskets had some kind of an elastomeric coating on them, from the get go. The sheet that came with them suggested three tightening sequences, rather than two and to install them without any coating, so that's what I did.

Got the heads back. They look sharp. Don did go .010" on them. He said that the one that I saw leaking had some nonsense by one of the water passages that required a little more than.007 to trim out, but that it was flat and the other had a slight twist in it that required a touch more than .008" so he rounded up.

He said that between the two heads, if the conditions of both at their best were combined, I'd have one good cylinder head. One had a good surface, but was tweaked and the other was straight, but had a crummy seal surface.

I think I'm going to order a new set. The old ones look like they are ok, with a few small specks here and there that were lost in the process, nowhere important, but after having such a hard time with these sealing, I'm with you on this one, Shawn. I'm not going to risk it and have to pull the deal apart again.

The .010" cut makes me wonder if I should blend the flat side to the chamber, a bit. I'm going to cc one of the chambers again and see what these are at, now. Hopefully it didn't lose too much. If it drops a full 1cc, it will bump the static from 9.75:1 up to 9.89:1.

Dynamic is still way lower at this altitude with this cam, so I think I can run mid-grade without any trouble on about 32 total advance WOT as a starting point. I'm going to recurve the dist. after it's broken in to get total timing in at around 3k and watch how it progresses up to that point.

I think I'll pressure check the engine again, before I fire it to be sure everything is sound.

I think I should also straightedge the block again.