Well I just did my 1st valve lash adjustment this past weekend as I finish putting the motor back together and ready to reinstall into the car. I have always paid to have my engines assembled so this is all new experience for me

My question is; when using stud girdles that clamp onto the poly locks, is it possible for the lash to still change after running for a while? I adjusted all the lash, then installed the stud girdles, rechecked the lash and made any adjustments necessary after finding if the studs moved at all with the girdles in place. Since I set the ash cold, I set them all .004 tighter to allow for some growth in lash when running. The lash is suppose to be intake .016, exhaust .018 so I set them .012 & .014 respectively.

TIA

 

They might change a bit or a lot depending how well worn in everything is. If it has a few thousand miles on it then the lash should not change too much if any from hot setting after running a while.

IF it is a rebuilt using used parts then I would expect some lash difference but not alot after it has a few more miles on it. THe stud girdle is extra locking pressure on top of the polylocks

Glad to see you got it back together Mike, now get there and smoke em up the place

 

When you adjust lash with a stud girdle only loosen the girdle on the valves your doing. My Crane girdle graps each cylinder pair. Only losen it enough to be able to rotate the rocker locking nut.

Valve lash is odd. Sometimes it can hold for thousands of miles and other times I might have 3-4 loosen up in a short period of time.

I figure out which ones i'm going to do by bumping the motor over and checking with a angled feeler gauge.

Then I crack the girdle nut.

Then I used a box 9/16th to rotate the rocker lock nut

Then I use a T-handle allen to spin the inner allen lock CCW.

With the feeler gauge in place between the roller tip and the valve stem, I rotate the rocker lock nut until I have the correct drag on the feeler gauge.

I then spin the Allen in till it just touches and starts to lift the nut. If you were to tighten the allen down hard it actually would increase the lash gap to the point where the feeler gauge isn’t even touching (Way to loose of lash)

When you do it, you will see what I’m talking about.

Anyway with the allen just touching and causing a slight loose lash, rotate the 9/16th locking nut down tight. It will reset the correct lash and bind the Allen down tight.

Retighten the stud girdle and move on to the next valve.

It’s a learning curve, but I’m sure that you will get good at it.

 

Thanks guys, Goerge, that's pretty much the routine I followed with my Crane girdles. I was just curious if with the girdle locking the poly locks prevented the lash from being able to open up. I see Motorheads point of the wear causing the lash to open which I didn't think of, the motor is lucky to have 250 miles on it so far.

I was hoping to have everything back between the fendors this past weekend, but just to many other things going on. My summer class just started last night (English Lit) so I now have reading and writing to contend with also With any luck I'll be wearing out my back tires some more before long

 

Hey Mike, glad to see your getting it back up and running.

I am using the same girdle and I drove over 4000 miles without my lash changing last summer, that included 50+ drag strip passes.

Nice thing about a girdle is that it locks everything in place.

Do you have any pictures of the work you did to your heads?

 

Well I put the engine & transmission back between the fenders on Sunday. Now I have to hook up all the little things along with the exhaust and what not

I hvae class tonight, but I'll take some pics of the work done to the heads and post them

 

Mike could you please take a bunch of closeup head pictures and e-mail them to me. I want to see and understand the milling for future ideas for me. All I did to my heads is hog out @ .090 of the lower edge of the oil drain back holes. So oil should be nearly a 10th of an inch less deep.

I have heavy cast valve covers with perimeter bolts. I had to install a new set of Morosso steel incert gaskets and keep them cranked down or else I get oil out of the back lower corners. Which indicated that the oil level under the valve covers is over the top of the valve cover gaskets while the motor is running..

 

Well here's some pics of my heads before & after. You can see where the oil drain back holes were opened up and then a channel was milled along the bottom of the spring pockets to lower the oil level in the springs.