Thread: Why my car lost 3 tenths last race

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OK, well I am back. Got the short block together and now I have some piston to valve clearance issues. The new pistons were made from the old pistons, Bill Miller I guess just copied the dome and valve cut outs. So we clayed the heads with the old head gasket (.051) and the cam straight up I only have .042 on the intake and have .135 on the exhaust and a quench of .065. We did retard the cam 5.5 degrees to just check the piston to valve clearance and of course we did gain on the intake around .020 but that does not give me .080 which I have read is the minimum you want for the intake valve to piston clearance. Also, since this is a custom ground cam I want to install it straight up and not mess with the cam timing.
So the plans are to cut the intake relief another .080 and also go with a .031 head gasket to get a .045 quench which would give me some extra space for the intake and maintain a minimum .100 on the exhaust and also give more compression. I heard that .035 is the minimum for the quench?
Am I going down the right road with this or is there something else I can do or should do?

Finally got the motor back together and it runs awesome. It is much more responsive with the new cam. I had BME cut the intake reliefs a bit for my clearance problem, they ended up taking out another .050. Here are a couple of pics and a video.