Seems like I read somewhere to leave these out.

Well...

http://www.dolphinsci.com/techbull.html

No head gaskets. I did lap mine to try and get a better seal though.

Sorry I titled the thread wrong, actually meant "shims" not "gaskets"

Did some reading on the STF...

I think I will leave them out, should have enough deck height still.

If your talking about the cylinder to case shims, I believe you want to keep those.

You need to measure your deck height (without shims), and then CC your heads. From that you can figure out your compression ratio. If it is in the range you want, then leave them out. If you want to lower the C.R. then you will need to calculate the thickness of shims required, and if the supplied shims happen to be the right thickness, then use them. Otherwise, buy some cylinder shims that are the correct thickness.

Demick

Don't just bolt the engine together without ccing and measuring deck-NEVER!

Compression is your friend if used wisely!

Banging your piston against the head is not a good thing @ high RPM either.

OK hypothetically speaking I should not have to much CR by not having the shims at the base of the cylinder since I have US pistons with the 5cc dish in them correct? Wasn't the original CR pretty low on these?

Well, hypothetically all machine-work is absolutely perfect, and nobody ever touched those cylinder heads until you tore them off the car, and every single part that gets bolted together on the motor is absolutely perfectly in the middle of its "tolerance range" to the millionth of an inch...

Oh, you mean you have a real-world engine with an unknown history, and not a hypothetical dream motor?

Well, in that case, you really ought to CC the heads and measure up the deck height.

--DD

I use this calculator here
http://www.btinternet.com/~mezporting/header.html
San Diego Plastics GAVE me a 4"x4" pc of plexi. I cut it round to fit in teh chamber, drilled a 3/8 fill hole in teh middle. the pharmacy sold me a graduated in CCs beaker for $5. I put a thin bead of grease on teh plexi to seal it on there and filled it up. all this took less than an hour to do. my stock heads (I thought) only measured 50cc. should be 60cc

oh yeah, I should mention that at 60cc (hypothetically)it was a nice 8.5 to 1 but at the actual 50cc measured value it would be over 10 to 1. I think this would have been a disaster on pump gas