I'm a fairly new member of woodsbuggy.com. This is my first post here, but I have visited the site alot and think it's great. My brother and I are currently replacing the jugs and pistons in my stock 1600cc vw aircooled engine because it was starting to smoke a bit much. I decided to go with 87mm jugs/pistons. When I removed the heads, the passenger side head had shims between the cylinder and the head, but the driver's side did not. We decided to leave the shims out when we put it back together. My question is: Is there an easy way to tell if I need the shims before I crank the engine up and possibly cause damage? I did remove the spark plugs and turn the engine over manually by the crank pulley a few times and listen for any contact that might happen between the exhaust valve and the piston, but it seemed fine. Are there any other tests you guys might recommend before starting it?.

if they were copper someone trying to get to seal off if is stock you should be fine

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drive it like you know how too fix it

Did you happen to check the deck height the heads might not match .make shure one is not fly cut and they were making up the diffrence .I would take the heads back off ,ck deck hight ,and head cc. you may can fly cut add copper head gaskets raise compression get more bang for your buck

they are probaly in there because the head was leaking at one time,u dont need them if u know how to seal one up right

The heads need to be cc'd to be sure. Could have been one head replaced at some point.

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