Aftermarket cylinder head debate - who's the best
That measurement doesn't bother me, I'll be running it like that. The intake side needs a .020" shim to get the installed height correct.
The part that bothers me is the .025" difference in valve stem length.
Would you let a head you were selling slide like that or would you have equalized them?
Hard to compare shops to one and another. Different philosophies exist. In our shop I do all the gasoline cylinder head and engine assemblies. All the valve jobs, no one else. We are not doing a lot of work any more because of what we charge. We have to because of the time spent in what we do.
It's like this. When I worked a mine here in Idaho I did all the special project designs and fabrications in the welding shop. One day a supervisor came to me with a project and said, "It's just a rock roller for our access road work, it doesn't have to be a 'piano'."
My response to him, "Then why did you come to the piano maker?"
Every engine built in the shop is treated as a race engine and gets the same care. If they want a cheapo stock engine, they need to buy some junk from somebody else, because, everything here is going to be expensive. Even the stock engines.
I don't know what you paid for your head assembly, but no, here out of our shop, the valve tips would be level.
A true story. Many years ago my father worked at a shop that did land speed record attempts at Bonneville. He was doing some cylinder head work when the owner/driver came by and asked how it was going.
Dad told him he still had to level the valve tips and the owner said, "They'll be okay as they are."
Dad said, "No, I need to correct them."
The owner went over to bench and picked up a 9" angle grinder and ran it across all the valve tips and said, "There! Now they are all even!" and stomped away.
Just having a bad day? Hard to say.
Now my valve tips......skipping ahead a few steps......I set all the installed heights, equal, + or - .001" (not necessarily to the desired finished height, but equal) when doing the valve job. I use one intake and one exhaust valve to do all the seats using the same retainer and locks. Then make combustion chamber corrections around the valve seats if necessary. Even after setting them as I did, when I go to install the valves, I find sometimes .010" difference in installed heights because of the differences in valves, retainers and locks. So I have to start juggling valves, retainers and locks to close up the differences. Then, when that is accomplished, I have to balance the valve tip lengths. Then the valves are marked with a felt pen and kept to the cylinder they were fitted to. (
Never use a metal stamp to mark the valve location, it warps the valves!) If done the way I do it, I find valve tip grinding is kept to a very minimum. Because, I think valve tip grinding should be kept to very small amounts.
