I have the federal mogul rebuild kit for a 350 from summit that says has 9.35:1 compression w/ 64cc heads and hyper. flat tops. Should I buy thinner head gaskets to bump the compression a little? I don't really want to run higher than 89 octane and I have to pass emissions, so should I just stick with the regular gaskets? The rest of my combo includes vortech heads, xe268h cam, and CC'd carb/dist.

 

yes stick with the head gaskets you have now. If you bump the compression any more you might be running premium fuel.

 

What is the compressed thickness of the gaskets? Can you give us a part number?

What is the quality of the rebuild kit from federal mogul? When it comes to head gaskets, you really don't want to cheap out, so if it's an economy rebuild kit, I suggest you consider getting a set of higher quality ones. I went with fel pro steel shims which are .015 (if I remember correctly, stock gaskets are around .04ish compression thickness). That equates to roughly a half of a point of compression increase.

Just look for a high quality head gasket in the .04 range if you don't want to gain compression.