N14 Head Gasket and shims? What's your experience?

I had one go back in 2004, sunken liners. Shop said they could shim the liners, but it was only a temporary fix and would not guarantee the work.
So I got rid of the truck. Definitely not a permanent solution.

 

I think it was a company that made stainless cheater shims for Big Cam from CA. Not proper repair, but saved someone from overhaul.

 

Yes, it's a corner cutting, cost cutting cheap out patch instead of doing the job right. It's about 50/50 whether they hold up or not.

 

I thank I saw some of those. Stainless and had a curl on the outside of the liner to center them.

 

Yep. I never used them, but a friend of mine did with very good luck. One of his customers had a Big Cam with a leaking injector cup. It is was cheaper to put on a reman head vs buy the tooling for the cups, so head came off. Got it all cleaned up and the liners were @ low end of spec. It was a pre-LPF liner block that had never been converted. Owner had year til retirement and didn't really feel like a costly overhaul because engine had no other issues and had he had just done the camshaft and had it timed spot on giving him consistent 6 MPG running west coast. They shimmed it and had zero issues. Sold the truck and continued running good til a cowboy driver scuffed a piston.

 

I've done that repair using shims with great success provided the liner wear falls within the cummins specs. There is a service parts topic on it.