Dave, I have a fix for you. without reading all this how big is the gap you want to fill. Call me 860 930 0548.
There are "rules of thumb" out there, but it comes down to basic trigonometry...you might want to grab your calculator. It's not too hard to calculate since the SBB & BBB intake surfaces and deck surface are at 90°, so each deck is sitting at 45° to parallel. Let's assume everything matches up just fine, then you decide to mill the heads 0.030" which lowers the intake ports and bolt holes too much. The best solution is to mill the intake side of the heads, not the intake - that way the heads will work with another off-the-shelf or stock intake later in life. It's also the way to go when angle milling. Whatever angle offset you mill the head's deck, you use the same offset on the intake side to get the faces back to 90°. After you mill the head deck surface 0.030", to get the intake back in line with the heads you would have to remove: SIN45° X 0.030"= 0.021" from each cylinder head intake manifold surface.To get the front & rear engine intake end seals to the block back in order you have to remove 0.030"/COS45° = 0.042" from the end seal surfaces on the block.These formulas work for block deck milling, too. If you mill both heads and block deck, sum the amounts removed and use the formulae. If you're dropping a new intake on and the head ports/bolt holes are too far "down" for the intake, you can either do trial & error removing a litle bit from the intake or head and test fitting, or attempt to measure the amount of offset and use the formulae above. If the ports appear to be too "high" for the intake, you can purchase thicker composite intake gaskets to help out. I'm only on my first coffee this morning, so if I goofed someone holler. Sorry for the long, boring post! Devon
The problem with the TA intake and High Port type heads is the intake port alignment. The angles are off and thinner gaskets or anything you mill off the manifold only makes it worse. The BEST fix is to find a way to fill the gap and stay with the .100" gaskets. I am going to make aluminum spacers.
Have .250" plate cut into strips for each end of the intake. Just need to get them drilled and tapered on the ends.:TU:
