Head saver shim

[rasmussen316]

This is a 92 with one bad head gasket. I had to have .036 removed from the preivous remanufactured head. I called the company in st loouis and ordered a head saver shim. Does anyone have any experiences with it? Or the shims in general? Thanks

[FestYboy]

nope, we run the head as shaved and enjoy the added compression...

[XFSE71]

there are a couple of issues with milling a cyl head on an OHC engine. If the head is warped and you cut off the high spots then there is a risk of binding the camshaft when you bolt it back down. Line boring can be pricey, but that is the fix. The other issue is cam crank distances have been reduced. The cam is now closer to the crankshaft, but the belt is the same. This causes the cam to be retarded, an offset key or offset sprocket are the cure, neither of which are available to Festiva (I guess). So a shim is a good idea, although there may be other issues with the shim (detonation / preignition).

[blkfordsedan]

Not sure how you would align bore these things, since they don't have removable caps on the cam journals or bearing inserts. I have an old Sealed Power catalog that shows cam bearing repair inserts, but they are discontinued. I imagine if you looked hard enough, you could find some cam bearings for another engine and make them work with enough machine work....but like you said, cost prohibitive. Good used heads are not too hard to find.

The cam timing will be retarded by milling the head, but not enough to really even notice. IIRC, milling my head .020" retarded the cam by less than one degree.