Hi. I have been looking but haven't seen any head gaskets that are sized to fit the bore size. The Felpros I have have a bore opening of 4.512" . My bore in my 383 is 4.28".

Surely there is a gasket made to properly fit a .030 over 383 bore? I would prefer not having that little space between the block and head caused by this Felpro gasket to trap gases, and screw up the flame travel.

Thanks.

Depends which heads you are using. The head gasket needs to fit the chamber in the head not just the cylinder. There are a lot of different head gaskets with a lot of different bore sizes available.

Great! Who sells them and can provide the correct one?

Thanks.

here are a few gaskets that will fit

http://www.summitracing.com/search/part-type/head-gaskets/make/dodge/engine-size/6-3l-383/engine-family/mopar-big-block-b?N=4294924325%2B4294883973&SortBy=Default&SortOrder=Ascending

Here is a picture out of my big block book which shows a few of the gaskets available. If you're new to big blocks you might want to start out by reading a few of the books available.

Thanks. But all those on the Summit pages show a 4.38" bore (which I really doubt is true). I want a 4.28" bore.

One thing I just thought about, I suppose the bore opening size would shrink a bit when tightening the head down, as the material is squeezed out of shape. I don't know how much though. It would depend on several things.

Again, the openings in my Felpro gaskets measure 4.512". If someone has some gaskets that you can measure, I would like to know the bore opening diameter. Also, to get the opening diameter of some used gaskets would be interesting.

Thoughts?

Well, I found this...

http://www.moparts.org/Tech/Archive/bb/2.html

Why do you doubt the truth of them listing 4.380" bore on those gaskets?

Ya know, using a 4.380" bore gasket on a 4.280" bore is only going to reveal .050" of the deck.
What are you splitting hairs on?

I doubt that you want that small of a bore size. Most of the small bore gaskets won't work with aftermarket heads. You need to take a look at the cylinder head chapter in the book. You're focused on the wrong thing, the cylinder bore size isn't the most important factor when picking a head gasket.

I always run the felpro 1009's. There is a Mopar part number to order a pair for like $60. They work perfect for 383 but too small for 400.

The 1009 is a small bore gasket and it won't fit a lot of heads that have been CNC ported. The CNC chamber work opens up the chamber past the gasket opening.

FYI, I am using stock heads.

The gaskets I have here, Fel-pro 8915PT, measure 4.512 in the opening. I don't know what the compressed diameter would be.

69dart, that's good to know. Though the spec on the 1009 says 4.410" opening, which is larger than all those ones listed in that Summit link provided above (4.380").

If you're using stock cast iron heads then just use a set of stock steel shim gaskets.

Mopar use to sell two different versions of there beaded steel head gaskest for the wedge motors, one for the 361,383,413 and 426W motors that was .022 thick with the smaller bore size for those motors. The other larger bore size was for the 440 , it was .017 thick so maybe the engineers reduce the thickness on those to help keep the compression up Try seeing if any of the vendors out there still have any of the original head gaskest for the smaller bore motors