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I recently had a problem with my heads and had to have my trickflow fast as cast heads milled .050~ down. I got some cometic .098" head gaskets in it to help make up for how much was milled off the heads. I was test fitting my fast 102 intake manifold and noticed a slight gap at the very bottom of the intake, I can't get might through it but have seen people before having issues with the intake manifold alignment with milled heads. My pushrods came out to 7.500 on the intake which is right where trickflow says it should be on a new head, so I figured that would have been fine for intake manifold alignment. The bolts all lined up fine with no issues on the intake. I measured with a feeler gauge and you can barely get a .017 between the head and the bottom of the manifold, think the o rings will be able to seal that up? The rest of the intake manifold is flush to the head
I'm guessing you milled the heads to increase your compression.
If you used a .098 headgasket, you just lost all of that and then some.
FWIW, I ran a set of TEA 5.3 1.5 heads that had been milled .050-.060, a .045 HG gasket and had no issues with my FAST 102 sealing.
That does look like one thick *** MF headgasket.
I had an issue with the machine shop and the heads. I have owned the heads since new and had them just cleaned up. Got them back and one head was .050" shorter than the other. Shop was standing strong that they wouldn't have done that and it must have come from trick flow like that, I had no proof to back up that they were the first shop to touch the heads. So they milled the other head to match and I got thicker head gaskets to try and make up for some of the lost material since I don't want that high of compression on a twin turbo setup
Measured from one of the head bolt spots to the bottom of the deck on each head, and that matched what the pushrod length difference was showing. Took them back to the machine shop and they checked and they also had different CC's between the heads
You should have the cambers cc’d to make sure everything is the same side to side and not just trust the measurement you are taking. Also that had gasket is right and like mentioned you need to figure out quench and compression for your engine. Where does the piston fall related to the deck of the block? Is the engine na boosted??
The heads were CC'ed, one head was at 63cc and one was at 55cc. Everything is now machined to match. The head had to have right around 50 thou taken off to match. I was on a ls9 head gasket so I went to the cometic .098 head gasket to take up the .050 missing off the heads. Compression is right around 9.9-10:1 now. The pistons came up about 5-7thou above deck. I looked on the bottom of the intake and you can see where the arp head studs washers are hitting the bottom of the intake, so pretty sure that's what's causing the gap
Would you guys say to run the ls9 gaskets again to get the quench back in line, or a thicker head gasket to get the compression back. Ls9 gaskets put me at 11:1, thick head gaskets are 10:1. The car is a twin turbo e85 car
I called trick flow about the quench distance and they said with a dishes pistons, e85 and running boost I should have a problem with that much quench with these heads, maybe some lost efficiency and a little lazier spool up time
Smart engine builders don't set the compression with head gasket thickness. The compression is set by your choice of components such as pistons, head camber cc, etc. You pick a head gasket for optimum quench but obviously reading your thread you're smarter than everyone else and use shitty super thick head gasket to fix your non issue that you created. Another thing, I hope you don't take Trick Flows advice on pushrod length and not actually measure for yourself. I learned this one the hard way. Obviously your choice in lifters makes a difference in how small or large your target length should be.
Smart engine builders don't set the compression with head gasket thickness. The compression is set by your choice of components such as pistons, head camber cc, etc. You pick a head gasket for optimum quench but obviously reading your thread you're smarter than everyone else and use shitty super thick head gasket to fix your non issue that you created. Another thing, I hope you don't take Trick Flows advice on pushrod length and not actually measure for yourself. I learned this one the hard way. Obviously your choice in lifters makes a difference in how small or large your target length should be.
If you go back and read you will see that I didn't create the problem. I was using ls9 gaskets and when I was measuring for pushrod length after heads were torqued, I noticed I had a .050" difference between the even and odd firing banks, which I then confirmed by pulling the heads back off and measuring and also confirmed by taking them to the machine shop and having the chambers CC'ed. i didn't want to run the thicker head gasket but it was means to keeping geometry correct on the intake and compression ratio in the ball park of where I wanted.
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Fast 102 fitment question 
