Help with Head Gasket selection
The car went in to a professional shop to have some accident and rust damage repaired correctly. So to do that I had to blow it apart. Seems like a great opportunity to take apart the motor and finally find out what I really have. It is a forged crank, 6/70 casting 340 and it turns out that it still has the stock pistons and hasn't been bored over yet. WooHoo!! It has been rebuilt because it has Dorman freeze plugs and the J heads have modern seals, but looks like they took it apart and put it back together. Just barely can feel the beginning of a lip at the top of the cylinder and still a little cross hatch left.
I'm going to put it back together with some ProMaxx 171 heads, PRW 1.6 rockers, B3 correction kit, and a Comp XE275HL hydraulic flat tappet cam that I already have. I had Jones spec a nifty SFT cam for me, but it was done with a manual trans in mind and he said it won't work with an automatic an my converter. The manual conversion isn't in the budget for a while so I'm going with what I have. Car is 73 Cuda, 727/2500 stall, 3.55 gear, 3600lbs and is to be road course/street oriented, not drag race. Also getting a new Kevco pan and a new balancer.
I need to select a head gasket to work with these closed chamber, 63cc heads. My pistons are .025-.027 out of the hole, stock Chrysler pistons. Block may have been decked. Using the Diamond piston compression calculator I'm getting 10.1 static using a .055 gasket and assuming 6cc for the piston eyebrows, which was a guess. Is that 6cc close? That gasket gives me .030 quench and if I go to .065 gasket I end up with 9.85:1. I want to have as much compression as I can keep with 93 octane. Looking for recommendations. I think .030 is about as tight as I want to go on the quench? I'm just starting this today so I still need to go back and verify the chamber volume and the height above deck with an indicator instead of the feeler gauge I used this morning. I'm sure I'll have a few more questions after this.
edit...The head surface seems very smooth, no tool marks, so I think I can use a Cometic? Will verify once it is cleaned up better.