Cylinder Head Spring Upgrade

[frankeeski]

As some of you may know, I have been running a donor motor in my Roadster for the past 3 years. It was never intended to live in the engine bay for that long but life happens. I have, over that time, been accumulating parts to put together a new 347 to take the place of the well used bullet currently residing under the hood. I picked up a set of heads from one of the locals a couple of year ago. They were/are brand new but as many of you know most assembled cylinder heads only allow you to run a cam with .500 max lift. The cam I am going to be running surpasses that by .065. Knowing I had to replace the springs for the cam to operate I figured it would be a good opportunity to take my "as cast" heads and massage them a bit. I've got a bit more than 40 hours of porting time smoothing out the intake and exhaust runners and taking all of the sharp edges of of the combustion chambers. That brings us current. I am of the school that once the seals are removed they are trash so I ordered up a set of Howard Cams Flouro-somthing or other seals (DuPont® fluoropolymer). I can't say enough about these so far. Easy install with no special tools, they install with just your fingers. They seem to have a nice seal to both the guides and the stems. Here is a step by step for any of you that plan on tackling this job yourselves.

Here are the parts I started with. New springs from Comp, Seals from Howard Cams,one .030 shim, one .015 shim, the original valve and my existing retainers and lock. Remember to coat the valve stem liberally with Moly-Lube before inserting into the guide. Just gives it some lubrication at start up the first time.

Seals being installed with just fingers on the stem and guide. Be careful to push it on straight as to not booger up the inside of the seal.

Stem installed all the way down on the guide. Now it is ready for the spring, retainer and the lock.

Valve spring micrometer used to measure the installed height of the valve spring. I installed the two shim to sneak up on the 1.80 installed height measurement I need for the springs. Note the micrometer is not yet at 1.8 for the picture, it is showing 1.780 and still not quite snug.