I'm currently in the process of pulling my brother's car apart to replace the headgaskets (one's blown). His motor was built about 5-6 years ago by an engine shop and I'm not sure they keep records of the items used for rebuilds and such. A little info on his motor. His motor is a 355 iron block with aluminum AFR heads and an 10# supercharger. The heads are untouched but the intake base and heads have been milled. He had a comp ration of 9:1 for as it sits now (according to shop when first done) but I'm not sure what pistons he has. I would assume at this point that they are just flat topped off the shelf forged, but will now more once the heads are off. My immediate concerns at this point would be what head gasket thickness to maintain the correct comp ratio and gasket material, considering the iron block and aluminum head? I have a call into the shop to see if tehy can send me any info so I may have more info then but any general sugestions on what i should be looking for would be great. Thanks,

Kyle

 

Measure the thickness of the gasket already on the motor.

Rich

 

depending on the head gasket you might be able to still see the product number on the gasket.

 

That's what i was planning on doing and hoping that maybe the part # was still on there. My only concern is the shop that built the motor may not be the most reliable as far as piecing things together. I'm not sure that they took into consideration that it was an iron block and aluminum heads. I may be way off base here but some of their past mistakes that I have had to correct are popping up in my head right about now (NA cam for a FI motor, milling the heads but not the intake, etc). We'll see once I get teh heads off. I know with the limited info I have right now, it's really a crap shoot so I appreciate the early responses. Thanks,

Kyle