Russ linke

[Mark Yacavone]

Originally Posted by gsa612

Nowadays you can have the piston at any deck height, as long as you make the min.spec.listed in the NHRA blueprint spec.for that engine.Before you had to have the factory deck which was posted then run a gasket to get the posted min.My motor has a .008 neg.deck,total deck is .030 in the specs.the min.gasket thickness would be .022 to get to .030.Now I can put the piston at zero deck but have to have a min.030 gasket to get to the .030 min.spec.You have to use the gasket thickness to get to the listed min.spec. ...gsa612

John, Good luck on that .030 deck :-)

Th e 78 400 Pontiac is +.004 with .043 gasket.
The PT Felpro was .048 out of the package.It would compress to around .043.
You had to run a + deck back then so we had to shoot for something on the + side, like .001 or .002 to be safe.
Wesley never did like that rule, and eventually it was changed to what we have today.

The LT1 is .015 down , with a .047 gasket.
That means, if you had at a - .013 piston , hypothetically speaking, of course, you'd need a .049 - .050 compressed gasket.
The Felpro gasket spec is .047 to .053, so a word to the wise there.

Cometics are pretty much as ordered, but not cheap.
As much as they cost though, you wouldn't want to toss them around, willy nilly.
You'd probably have a good handle on this.
There..I should be a politician with this one ;-)