Head gasket recommendations for magnum

nm9stheham said
Not trying to make life harder for anyone, but going from the the exhaust valve hitting the piston (as reported) to .090" clearance with 4 degrees of retard is not making sense. I suspect that the lifters were either pumped up before (giving less clearance that in actual running) or they are collapsed now (showing less clearance than they will actually have running), or both. I could be wrong, but I question the test setup and what the lifters are doing here. Going from lifters pumped up to collapsed will change the valve opening by as much as .200".

Sorry forgot to update the post, from what i remember the lifters did collapse which threw everything off

nm9stheham said
Yes.... a steep ramp cam will have maybe as much .005" lift change at the lifter per degree..... change 4 degrees and that is .020" at the lifter or .030" at the valve.... not the change of around .100" as being reported. That is what is concerning.

I just don't want the OP being fooled because the lifters have bled down and are not opening up all the way, and he ends up with a problem. One way to doublecheck would be to measure the actual full lift at the valve to see if it is about what it should be.

I ended up using a used lifter from a previous engine build and took the lifter apart, shoved something in it to make it mimic a solid lifter, put that in and did my clearence checks and from what i recall it just got around .015 int/035 Exh clearence. I put the engine back together with a .045 thick head gasket when crushed, fired it up and dang thing ran smooth!! Took it for a test drive and hard launched it several times, no ping what so ever and ran strong!! i ended up selling the car 3 months later after the repair due to financial reasons.