Well thanks for the welcome. I apologize for some long posts, but I tend to be a motor-mouth and after lecturing for 33 years I am able talk about any subject for 75 minutes! Today has been a beautiful day! Yesterday I received my TCI 4-bar kit for my 2.79 Maverick rear and today I found a friendly welder who did a great job for a very reasonable fee. Mr. Gary Dye of "Best Welding" is a bit remote but a friendly "Harley Man" with a neat MIG welder. He is down on Route 460 just off of I-295, east of Petersburg VA and asked that I advertise him a bit for rodders in the mid-Atlantic region. He is right next to the Mid-Atlantic VW Garage with an impressive number of junk VWs to choose from. Anyway, I guess I am a bit over my head in discussions with Brickman and Richard/TechInspector1 regarding squish. Briefly I have learned that probably I can increase the mileage of my roadster (SBC350/TH350/2.79:1 Maverick rear) with a short duration cam AND I CAN RUN HIGH COMPRESSION IF THE SQUISH SPACE IS SMALL. Richard's suggested 0.035" clearance seems tight to me but the good news is that by using a Felpro head gasket with 0.015" compressed thickness and a standard deck height of 0.025" the squish space should be 0.040". I am reluctant to go all the way to 11:1 C.R. but I can now hope that with tight squish space I might even be able to run 89 octane with a 9.1 C.R.???? With my "Copper Parachute" retirement package I probably will choose a low end crate motor from Automotive Warehouse in Charlotte and trade in my '76 Corvette two-bolt 350 for a 4-bolt 9.1 CR engine. The only problem is that they only sell Melling cams and so I will have to choose from their standard cams. Well I note that the original Model-A engine made 42 HP at 2200 rpm and used a 3.78:1 rear with 21"/19" tires and achieved 20 mpg. While a 260 HP 350 with a short duration cam might not deserve "He He He", at about five times the original HP it ought to deserve a "He He" and maybe I can crack the 20 mpg barrier and still cruise at 70 mph running only about 2200 rpm. I am amazed to find this forum when I had so many questions. It is really a GREAT FORUM with a lot of collected expertise and I am glad to have found it. If I can keep up the fast pace of construction I might be on the road by next summer and realize a life long dream of owning a Model A roadster? I hope to become just an assembler but running the brake lines look like the next challenge. This is progress report rather than a question, but I might ask other roadster owners with coil-spring rear suspension how to choose among the three holes in the shock mount. The obvious answer is probably to use the middle hole first and see how it sits? I like the "down hill" stance so I may end up jacking it up in the top hole but I guess it depends on tire size.

Best Wishes,
Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teenage rodder