All ready to lap my HSF and CPU today and I discovered that the pushpins on the AC7 pro are riveted on and that they actually hang BELOW the HS base - thus making lapping very difficult (if even possible).
Has anyone heard of a solution to this problem. If not I'll have to improvise, but was hoping to get some advice.

side note: both my e4300 IHS and my AC7 base are slightly concave (used a razor blade)... the pattern of the paste after I removed the HSF also confirms this observation...

Take a piece of cut glass, like 2 bucks at a hardware store, take it home with you, and put it on the face of the heatsink, see if its level. If it is it doesnt need to be lapped, i have this cpu cooler, and mine was nice and straight.

Thanks, that's good advice and I'll try it out of curiousity, but I can tell that it is concave, although only slightly. Combined with a concave IHS on the cpu this creates a nice fat air pocket (or pocket of heavy TC) just above the center. Again, I confirmed this by looking at the TC pattern after removing the HSF.

I did mine. I took a small wood block the size of a small box of matches and wrapped sand paper around it. Shes flat and shinny now.

was hoping there was a better way (removing clips), but that (block) idea sounds pretty good