M50/M52 Turbo Head Gasket Advice - What CR?

[MrMuddle]

Hi All, I'm just wondering if anyone has any advice on what head gasket setup to run in relation to CR? I was looking at the different cometic mls gasket options as well as some of the cheaper decomp plate options. I'm just wondering from experience on your own cars, would you advise trying to keep CR as close to stock as possible or would you lower it to like 8.5:1?

I'm in the process of rebuilding my UK ally(nikasil) M52B28 to be an M50B25 cast block, with my M52B28 internals and head. The last two things I need now is head gasket and head studs. I'll be running an ebay GT3582 turbo and ideally want to aim for 350hp initially, but if I can go higher and still keep it reliable I will. Fuel is 99RON and the car is my E39 daily that I use for track days as well.

Any advice would be great, including if the decemp plates, like from FTWL here are any good or better to avoid. Also is it a must to use ARP head studs or are the stock 10mm head studs up to the job?

Thanks in advance
Rob

[MrMuddle]

Sorry another question, with 99RON fuel could I get away with using a stock head gasket and stock compression, but still use ARP head studs to avoid the head lifting. Or should stock hg and studs be good for my power goals?

[nikimause]

JE cutring headgasket is what everyone’s using these days along with myself. You can get it from CESmotorsports.com There are two types of people out there. Ones who will tell you to lower compression as much as you could and the ones like myself, keep it as high as possible. For pump gas you can sandwich that gasket with a copper spacer to lower the compression. ARP studs over stock bolts to prevent head lifting. And I personally don’t think there’s such a thing as reliable eBay turbo.

[MrMuddle]

Thanks very much for the reply, I'll take a look at their website then and see what I need to order.