Main thing about the small bore motors is that you have to keep the valve head sizes small (1.90"/1.50" for instance) to prevent shrouding the valves against the cylinder walls. Bigger valves do not necessarily make a faster motor.
Every motor builder should know everything there is to know about his motor, including the exact combustion chamber volume and the intake and exhaust port volumes. Unless you have owned the heads since they were produced, you have no idea what previous owners did to them. They need to be cc'd and they also need to be checked to see if anyone has cut the (head to manifold) angle. The interface between the heads and intake is one of the least checked things in motor building, but one of the most important, along with squish/quench. If the ports on the intake aren't square to the ports on the heads, there will be a gap, either at the top of the ports or at the bottom of the ports. If the gap is on the top of the port, it can be found by spraying ether or other combustible substance around the area with the motor running. If the motor speeds up, there's your vacuum leak.
On the other hand, you will never find a gap on the bottom side with a combustible substance because you can't get to it from the top of the motor. If the gap is on the bottom, it will confound the air/fuel mixture just like a gap on the top of the port, but on the bottom, we have still another player in the mix, the motor can pull oily crankcase vapors into the cylinders on the intake stroke which will result in fouled and oily spark plugs. This will begin all sorts of scenarios in your mind, including thinking maybe bad rings or bad valve guides or excessive valve to guide clearance or a myriad of other possibilities. So, take some time and make absolutely certain that the intake to head junction at the top and bottom of the ports is flat and parallel and able to seal up.
You made a statement earlier about using a thicker head gasket to lower static compression ratio. That is a very bad idea. It has been found that using a thicker gasket and lowering the SCR that way can lead to worse deonation than it you had left the thin gasket in place. Squish/Quench is king as far as controlling detonation, although it isn't quite as critical with a blown motor because the blower helps to homogenize the mixture just as squish/quench does. You should know this and keep it written down somewhere.....
Static compression ratio is a function of 5 different values, cylinder volume, combustion chamber volume, piston deck height (measurement from the crown of the piston to the block deck with the piston at top dead center), piston crown configuration and head gasket bore and thickness.
Cylinder volume, combustion chamber volume and piston crown configuration should be used to determine static compression ratio.
Gasket bore/thickness and piston deck height are used to determine squish/quench.
Every engine build should begin with measuring the block deck height, then choosing a crank/rod/piston "stack" that will fit into that block deck height, then cutting the block deck heights to the desired piston deck height.
BLOCK DECK HEIGHT: The measurement from the centerline of the main bearing bore to the block deck surface where the heads bolt on. Measure all four corners of the block. Factory blueprint for this measurement is ~9.025" (nine inches and twenty five thousandths of an inch). You can do this at home with a 12" dial caliper by adding 1/2 the main bearing bore to the measurement taken with the caliper.
PISTON DECK HEIGHT: The measurement from the crown of the piston (the flat part of the crown that is just above the top compression ring and NOT including any pop-up or dome) to the block deck where the heads bolt on. Factory blueprint for this measurement is ~0.025" (twenty five thousandths of an inch).
SQUISH/QUENCH: The measurement from the piston crown to the block decks where the heads bolt on and including the head gasket thickness. Most hot rodders will shoot for somewhere between 0.035" (thirty five thousandths of an inch) and 0.045" (forty five thousandths of an inch). As the piston approaches top dead center, the air/fuel mixture above the piston will be trapped between the crown of the piston, where there is a flat mesa, and the bottom of the cylinder head, where there is another flat mesa. As the piston comes up, it compresses and "squishes" that slug of mixture across the cylinder to the combustion chamber area of the head. This very high speed mass of mixture breaks up droplets of mixture and homogenizes the fuel/air slug go that all of the mixure can burn properly. This prevents detonation and makes more power. Squish/quench is the sum of the piston compression height and the head gasket thickness. If, for instance, the piston crown was exactly even with the block deck (called zero deck) and the gasket thickness was 0.041", then the squish/quench would be 0.041".
COMPRESSION HEIGHT: The measurement from the centerline of the wrist pin to the crown of the piston, not counting any pop-up or dome. Design measurement for a 350 motor is 1.560" (one inch and five hundred and sixty thousandths of an inch). Some manufacturers will shorten the compression height to make concession for the machine shop cutting the block decks to get a fresh surface for the head gasket to seal to. This shorter piston kills squish/quench and is to be avoided by us hot rodders. Use a 1.560" or taller piston in a 350 and a 1.025" or taller piston in a 383 build when using a 6.000" connecting rod. A 283 with a 5.7" rod and 3.000" stroke crank would use a piston compression height of 1.800".
STACK: The sum of the crankshaft RADIUS, the rod length and the piston compression height. The smart way to build a motor is to first measure the block deck height, then choose a stack of parts that will fit onto that space, then cut the excess off the block decks to reach a ZERO DECK so that you could then reach a pre-determined SQUISH/QUENCH with a certain thickness head gasket. For instance, if the block deck height was 9.015" and the stack of parts to be used was 9.000" and the build included using iron heads, then you could use a 0.020" thick steel shim head gasket and generate a squish/quench of 0.035". However, if you were going to use aluminum heads with this combo, you wouldn't want to use a steel shim gasket because of the possibility of "fretting" the heads. You would want to use a thicker composition gasket that would asborb some of the twisting and turning of the aluminum due to the different growth and shrink characteristics of the aluminum heads against the cast iron block. The thicker gasket would act as a cushion against cracking the heads. What you would want to do in that case is to cut the block decks to ZERO DECK HEIGHT and use a 0.035" to 0.045" thickness head gasket to set the squish/quench.
Here is what you want to use to CC volumes....
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/sum-911581/overview/
Use Isopropyl Alcohol from the grocery or drug store and color it with food coloring from the grocery store so you can see the alcohol in the burette.
Maybe this will help you to understand some of the subtleties of engine building and how to do it right.
I have no idea how I got two videos of the same thing on here.....
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