[thews]

Originally Posted by Squidward

My guess: How sure are you that the gasket wasn't marginally deformed at install? It might just be poor production QA that wasn't noticed.

I hope so. The crux of all the "what if" scenarios turn out the best for me if the head and block aren't warped. If they had used a 350 gasket, this wouldn't have happened. I'm going with the orange head gaskets... thanks to whoever posted they had noticed a lot of these orange gaskets when tearing them down (presumably from the factory).

As long as these orange gaskets hold, I'm fairly confident there's also a 0.5 CR boost. The 4 spaces on the pistons tops don't come close to the surface area given up by using the 400 gaskets on a 350. I know they crush and I don't know how much, but I'll still bet the extra cc's given up with that huge lip when using a 400 gasket is more than the relief in the pistons.

Thanks again for the input... I'm out of my league here in what to do next calling all the shots (I'd rather dump it off in a machine shop and pick it up when it's done).