I'm building Paul's mucho modified 300 up and it's time to fit the cylinders. Trouble is that after measuring the squish and the volumes it came to light that I was all out of the gasket paper I needed. Not to worry, I called up my Honda man in Bangers and he's gonna stick some in the post. Only the best of course, genuine honda gasket paper.

Trouble is I want to get on with it. I need 0.7mm gasket paper, but all I've got is 0.6 NF5 gaskets and 0.8mm. So I thought I'd give the 0.8mm paper a go and see what the numbers were.

Anyway, checked the paper with my vernier....0.7mm. Hmmm, funny, says 0.8mm printed on it. Bit suspicious but thought I'd give it a bash anyway.

A little while later I'd cut up a base gasket, torqued things down and checked the squish. Got that same readings as when I'd used the 0.5mm gaskets. What's going on?

Pulled it apart and measured up the paper. 0.5mm!

The moral here is if you're using anything other than Honda gaskets or gasket paper then pay close attention to the 'crush'.

What I have is 0.8mm paper (alledgedly), that measures 0.7mm and crushes to 0,5mm. A good recipe for disaster.

I just ran the same test with 4 Honda gaskets. measure 0.52mm and crush to 0.5mm~0.51mm.

Honda quality.

I think I'll wait for my Honda paper to arrive before I proceed.