OEM Head Gasket-Thickness

[crest901]

Good day guys-here's my question...I've got a 96 road king with stage one done, put in a HQ-24 cam last year and rejetted the carb to a 45 slow and 175 main with the HQ needle.  In the process of changing the pistons to bump the compression to 9.5-1, gotta great deal on some Keith Black 305's.  I'm trying to set the squish band in the .032-.035 range, but I'm unsure of the thickness of the OEM 16770-84F head gasket I have. I believe it's either .040 or .045.  Either way, with the new piston .003 above the cylinder, I'm either gonna have .037 (not bad), or .042 (not so good) squish. Any ideas out there on how to get the correct squish?  I'm leaning towards leaving the base gasket out and using a liquid gasket like 3 bond 1104 or the like to lower the cylinder. Thanks for your help...

[wfolarry]

Get thinner head gaskets. Leaving the base gasket out will put the piston too high especially for KB's.

[Buddy WMC]

Look into the Cometic line, they come in several thickneses and are good head gaskets. Running the .030 steel compositions on mine at 10.5 to 1.

[crest901]

Thanks for the replies-after recalculating, looks like my squish is going to be around .037 (.040 head gasket with .003 deck height). I don't know if trying to drop another .005 to get to .032 squish would be worth the extra time and money, being that it's a rather tame build anyway.  Any advice would be appreciated.  Thanks

[Buddy WMC]

Are the cylinders off? If so, maybe you can adjust the base gasket thickness as well. To get my CR right on at 10.5 to 1 with my 72cc SE heads that wfolarry ported, we decked the heads .010 to get them back to 72cc's. We also used the .020 Genuine James base gaskets and .030 Cometic head gaskets along with 9.5 to 1 CP pistons. This engine rocks!!