New Guy Here

[Bruce R.]

Not good Bruce. It sounds like your valve seats were not cut to consistent depths. Me personally, I'd let a .020 variation go but .075 is just too much. You will have several lifters that will be close to collapsed. And your valve spring pressures are going to be all over the place also.
I would complain bitterly to the guy that did your heads and make him fix them.

Ain't no fixing them now, too deep, the only fix for the heads is new seat inserts. I think I'll grab a pair of new valves from a buddy and see what that looks like, if I get acceptable results I'll just get all new valves. I initially was going to grind the stems to bring them within 10 thou. of each other but 75 thou. is such a large disparity that I won't have much stem above some of the keepers.

[jayb]

Bruce, you might try running lash caps.  They can be ground to different thicknesses to compensate for the different valve stem heights.  You could also switch to an adjustable valve train, which would take out the different heights with rocker arm adjustments.  Good excuse to get some roller rockers 

[Bruce R.]

New valves solve the problem, seems that the valve faces were grooved so deep that I had to cut too much off to clean them up.  Gonna buy that Streetmaster on Sat.

[TorinoBP88]

Whoa!  wow, 0.075 is terrible.  My heads always come back 0.015 variability or less on a budget build.  you can get over-sized valve heads to push the valves into the chamber,  you can also put in new seats if you have to.  and of course touch up the valve tips.  But if they are that low, the valve spring pressures are all over the map unless he used wildly different shims on each valve spring.

[Bruce R.]

Got the new valves, now my height is within 18 to 23 thou of each other. I'm ready to stick this thing together, just waiting on the mailman to deliver the cam kit. Had to rebuild that spacer behind the damper, bad groove where the front seal rode, turned it down in the lathe and made a sleeve and shrink fit it on then re-machined it.

[TorinoBP88]

glad you fixed the spacer.  A speedi-sleve would have made your life easier!

[Bruce R.]

glad you fixed the spacer.  A speedi-sleve would have made your life easier!

Im a machinist, so it was a no brainer.