Rebuild so far.........

[grubscrew]

.............So the cam has been reprofiled to road race spec, balanced rods and pistons, they were 11 grams difference!, any way cut a long story.......... fitted the panda head and sorting out the required engine stud lengths etc (M10 x 1.25 pitch) in conjunction with the 40 dellorto manifold, bolted the head down and in setting up the valve timing the rocker carrier placed on and gaps set..
On rotating the crank there was ever such a slight resistance at TDC at both rotations, so i slid in a piece of ultra thin gasket strip into the spark plug holes easing back and forth the crank only to discover the edges of the valves were just kissing the piston crowns.
Off with the head I say.................. The copper gasket is only 0.5mm thick and so I shall put out a search for say 1.2mms sheet and deal with it that way. It would seem this engine will have quite a high compression.I think Rusty had the same issue some while back. Any ideas on cutting 1.2mm gasket sheet in copper?

[Rusty's Uncle]

Has the Panda head had a lot of skimming ? Plus the cam will be giving you more valve movement. I am running a tuned but unskimmed 500 head on the 652 barrels with the 500 crankcase. On assembly the piston crown was about 0.5mms above the barrel top at TDC which was about the same thickness as a standard head gasket. It all went together OK and the engine now runs very well 
I just finished a rebuild on a standard 499ccs engine last week and it was interesting to see that the piston crowns also rose up above the barrel tops. It's annoying but I would guess that you could go with a standard gasket along with the copper one. Not sure if you saw my thread on previous attempts to get copper gaskets made. Took my drawings to the laser cutters who could not cut copper so farmed them out to water jet cutters. They did not follow my verbal instructions , made mistakes with the computer set up so it all went pear shape. Can let you have a copy of the drawing if you have a friendly water jet cutter. I am sure that you will get there and apart from my dodgey clutch , looks like its an engine back out job, my engine seems sweet but I was a little dissapointed that it sounded a bit rattley at the top end for some reason. Found out when I was setting up the 499ccs engine that the 0.015" feeler gauge had bonded itself under the 0.010" one so it looks like I have 0.025" clearence on the exhaust tappets 

[grubscrew]

 ......luckily I have access to a machine shop , so the copper sheet ordered of 1.2mm should do the trick, as the interference was minimal.
 Yes the head does look as though its had a skim, but the piston crowns are flush with the barrel tops.
  The sprung loaded push rod tubes do look smart though. Mike.