Decided to go with the used lifters with the used cam. Got some vr1 and a bottle of Lucas break in additive. Seems to be a 50/50 chance either way.
But.... Have another question. For a quest to gain some compression in this little guy we wanted to go with a set of .022 steel shim head gaskets. The l2315 pistons are actually only down .005-008 in this engine. I used a feeler gauge and straight edge.(Probably not the most accurate method) however.... with piston to head clearance only being .027-.030 using 516 heads the shim gaskets wont work. Felpro 1009 will probably be the best choice. How did the factory get away with using steel shim gaskets with the earlier closed chamber heads? The pistons would have had to be a minimum .020 down to get a .040 clearance. Not to mention the actual size of those chambers varied so much these engine were probably way lower than the advertised ratios. We cc'd these head they are roughly 83-85. Just using the basic summit compression ratio calculator they could have been up to a point off. Am I thinking about this correctly?
The factory used an .021 shim gasket stock, the CH of those 2315's puts the pistons deeper than what you are measuring, they are a compromise piston to work with both the open chamber head and the closed chamber. If they really are only that deep then someone must have decked the block , are the numbers still on the ID pad in front of the pass side head ? The factory overstated compression ratios , a 69 4 bbl 383 is rated at 10.0 , it's more like 9.2 .
