Head saver shims or gaskets.

[Geoff Kingston]

GeoffD,
I probably did about 5/6000 miles on it before it was laid up for a long time, it was recommissioned for a new owner and has been back on the road now for several years, as far as I am aware the head has not been touched and it has not given problems, not sure what the total mileage is since the job was done, we must have just been lucky with the gaskets supplied by Paul Burd. Mike could not remember the distance between the cylinders on the imp engine but said they did tend to blow head gaskets but no worse with two, now of course for the Bristolthere are thicker gaskets available off the shelf and the option to have them custom made, indeed this afternoon Brian at Bristol Cars gave me the contact details of someone who makes thick copper gaskets which he said would do the job quite well.
Obviously if we use this head we will do all the other checks you suggest but looking at it a bit more carefully this afternoon I am not sure we will, it is an early head off an 85A engine which as well as being well skimmed has had a lot of welding done on it because of past corrosion problems and the finish in terms of the shape of the combustion chambers is not uniform.
I have a much better 85C head which looks as though it has never been skimmed but has slight erosion between two pairs of cylinders where a gasket has obviously blown, I am taking both heads to a local engineer tomorrow and I suspect we will end up going with the later head which will work fine with a standard gasket and I know will be an easy repair for him.
Will also see what he thinks about the early head and if he can improve the finish of the previous work done on it.
We have got the super unleaded over here so a higher CR should not be a problem based on your experience.
Thanks for the advice which is a great help.
GeoffK