engie rebuild on my L1

[extonyg]

cutting a long story short i done my valve clearances and found them all too tight and then found a couple of the rocker arms were badly worn because of this so i went about removing the engine to give it a full overhaul.
i found 2 badly worn rockers so thats not so bad.

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the valves and head are all quite coked up and dirty so the valves will be removed and cleaned and lapped back in, the head will all be being cleaned up as well.

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i also removed the barrels to have a look at the piston and rings as i was already there.the rings look good infact almost new.i found that the piston have wear marks on the 'driving' side of the piston though they dont feel rough or marks and the bores dont seem marked slight signs of wear but nothing serious, would you say these are ok to re-use as they dont feel rough or grooved??

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also i have heard about people removing the 'base' gasket to raise compression slightly if im right is this the gasket underneath the barrels?if you remove it do you have to use some sort of sealant instead or is it just 'face' fit??also if this is removed do the valve clearances need to be set differnetly not the original spec??
any help would be great cheers.

[extonyg]

also just another thing does anyone no what the diameter of the shims are i measured one at 7.47mm but i dont no if this is correct, as im looking to buy a kit of shims rather than just the odd one so i have a collection for doing them in the further there is a kit on ebay of 7.48mm shims can any tell me if they think these are correct or somewhere i can buy a kit of shims from.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HotCams-Valve-Shi ... 286.c0.m14

thanks