@cre

The head was milled .020" and the block was decked down .007" and the Cometic Headgasket is .051" so essentially its the same thickness as stock (i think, i keep getting different answers on stock thickness) i have also seen stock HG thickness at .053") so in the spirit of being safe we'll say

thats a total of .029" reduction. My understanding is that there is (standard) 1 mm of piston to valve clearance (.03937") (ive also heard that there is 1.5mm but i went with the safer lower clearance)

so that gives me.....*crunching numbers* .01037" of piston to valve clearance. (allowing for some thermal expansion etc. etc.)

Does that sound right?

IT LIVES! but....
 

well we fired it up today! It idles great, but when driving it, it does the EXACT same thing it did before. seemingly runs perfect until you hit exactly 4000 rpm then it starts spitting and stumbling.

I checked the timing w a light and its sitting at 10* advanced w/ a jumper on the diagnostic box.

But, I went through all this with it before the rebuild. It was sitting at 10* so i pulled the DIST and rotated it one tooth, put it back in and set it on 0* it dropped the idle so low it didnt want to run, so i adjusted the idle stop until it was idling around 1k rpm and it ran like crap when i drove it. I ohm'd the igniter/module/coil, throttle position sensor and the pick up coils. tested all of the VSV's and triple checked all wiring connections and vacuum lines. Everything seems to be perfect. could this be an ECU issue?

I think im going to post a new thread on this...