I'm getting ready to swap oil pans on my 617.951 replacing it with an earlier pan for clearance issues. The picture shows the rear rope seal on the original pan. I'm only replacing the lower half of the seal, leaving the half in the block untouched. The specifications call for cutting the seal 1mm proud. As shown the rope seal in the original pan is about 1mm "un-proud" which I'm taking as evidence that when the engine was last assembled all the "excess" was on the block side, thus indenting the seal on the pan side rather than having both sides flush.
My question is, should I cut the new seal flush allowing the existing block-side seal to compress the new seal the required amount or follow the specifications and leave it proud 1mm?
Sorry about the picture, it is my cheap "garage camera" that does pretty good for normal stuff but has trouble focusing close.