Heads not mating with cylinders completely

[Greg Greer]

I am installing rebuilt heads on my 912 engine. They are the same heads that came off the car. I cannot get them to mate flatly/evenly to the cylinders with the pushrod tubes installed. If I remove the pushrod tubes, I can mate the head flush with the cylinders. I tried mating the heads with the old pushrod tubes and cannot get the heads to mate with the cylinders in this case either. Both the old and new pushrod tubes are measuring 7 and 5/8 inches long. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

[hunt4356]

stick longer extended part of tube in case and use fingers to gradually align the four tubes into bottom ports of head. Then as you tighten down head bolts/nuts keep realigning them and should even out.

Michael