New thermostats issue! 79 Johnson 100 v4 cross flow.

[kskau36]

I am in need of advise with this pain in the neck thermostat replacement on this 79 Johnson 100 v4. I am in reassembly stage now but as you will see in the pictures the kit came with two cork gaskets and the thermostats has a rubber gasket on them. The rubber gasket on the thermostat don't seem to fit the recess in the middle housing right, so I assume you take those off the thermostats and only use the cork gaskets under the thermostat? You can see the difference in thickness from the pictures. Even with the cork gaskets it seems that it's a lot of squash value before the entire housing makes contact with the gasket on the engine block. Not sure what to do here and the SELOC book is very vague on this not to mention a royal pain trying to compress the relief springs while trying to get a bolt started.(Well this forum won't let me attach pictures so hope my description helps)

 

[faztbullet]

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