Manic Mechanic Gen II Head Installation

This head should increase compression, and hp. According to instructions you need to check the squish, and possibly adjust the squish if necessary.

Manic Mechanic calls for a 0.030" deck height/squish measurement. Your must have a piston with a 0.160" crown height.

If the clearance is more than 0.030", you'll need to lap the top of the cylinder with sandpaper on glass to reduce the clearance, or if it's not enough, maybe add a thicker head gasket to increase the clearance.

I made my measurments using used base and head gaskets. My squish measurment was 0.27"

I'm calling this good enough. Since I'll be installing new gaskets, the clearance, should end up a little more than I measured with used gaskets.

What this diagram from the Manic Mechanic site calls deck height, I call Squish. This is the clearance we're wanting to measure.



Make sure you're piston has a 0.160" crown height.



We're going to measure the gap between the top of the piston, and this part of the combustion chamber, called the squish band. It needs to be 0.030"



What we're going to do is place solder on the piston top using grease to hold it in position until we get the head tightened down. This solder is 0.036" diameter.



Next, torque the head down. 120 in lb should be enough

Now that the head is bolted down, we need to turn the motor over top dead center to hopefully crush the solder in order for us to measure our squish clearance.



Now remove the head and measure the thickness of the solder where it came in contact with the squish band.

Next we're going to learn how to stop a clutch from slipping lol.

culvercityclassic said:

That looks like a lot of work, thanks for showing us how to check this. Are you going to need special gas for that now?

Click to expand...

I don't think special gas, I hope, but a cooler spark plug for sure. Probably a 7.