The valves look straight...is holding a straight edge against them the correct way to check for straightness? The striation marks are concerning. I can't feel them with my thumbnail and the stem is the same diameter above, below, and on them. Is a valve with marks like that acceptable to use? I'm not able to find a tool to rent to do a 3 angle valve job. That should be done after lapping them, correct? Should the all ptfe seals (TA 1433E) automatically be replaced? Or only replace after performing a leak test after valves are grounded and lapped? Should the spring locators (TA 1452B.045) automatically be replaced? How can I tell of they're worn? Should guides be replaced? They look fine (e.g., not mushroomed, no burrs, etc.). ID and OD are the same at the top and bottom. Is the best method to measure for uniform tip height by placing the base of my dial indicator on the valve cover rail? Any other suggestions on what to keep an eye out for are appreciated
valve grinding, is usually done at a machine shop, and no, you will not be able to rent that equipment. lapping is old school, now days the tooling for valve grinding is much better, leave the stem height and seat/valve machine work to machine shop. they can advise you on what is needed. or not.
Straightness of the stem? Better would be a pair of V-blocks and a dial indicator between them. Spin the valve on the v-blocks, let the dial indicator tell you Total Indicated Runout. Straightness of the stem in relation to the head? Put the stem in a "good" guide, dial-indicate off the head while spinning the valve. I don't think you'll see a few thousandths of bend with a straightedge. I'd think so. The photo is kinda out-of-focus. No. Grind valve faces and seats first, then lap. Lots of folks make the mistake of thinking the common parts-store "Permatex" Valve Lapping Compound is sufficient. The stuff is so coarse you might as well use playground sand in wheel bearing grease to "lap" the valves. I bought a can of "Clover"-brand 400-grit lapping compound, and if I had it to do over, I'd have gotten even finer-grit. 600-grit, maybe. Finest I've seen for sale is 1200 grit, and I'd love to try some without having to buy the whole can. There's been discussion about NOT lapping valves. The story is that the lapping compound is driven into the "pores" of the metal, and can never be cleaned-out. Then the lapping compound in the "pores" acts as an abrasive on the mating parts. I'm no expert. I'm not buying-into this theory until I see better evidence. I lap. THEN I test valve seal with vacuum on the ports. If I can achieve appropriate vacuum, I call it good. Nobody is going to rent the equipment to grind valves or to grind seats. You probably would not want to use it if they did. It's really easy to beat-up valve and seat grinding equipment if it's handled roughly and never cleaned; and of course it's big and heavy so not particularly portable. Bent pilots can cause you to destroy a head. When I bought my valve and seat grinder, it took a week of disassembly, cleaning, adjusting, buying replacement "wear" parts, before I'd consider using it. Now I can pretty-easily hold 0.0005 ("half-a-thou") concentricity on a valve, sometimes half that. Still waiting on the seat grinder, I've never needed to use it yet. (God bless hardened seat inserts on the heads I've completed.) A "3-angle" valve seat job is NOTHING SPECIAL. It is the absolute minimum needed to get the valve seat "cleaned", positioned properly, and the right width. The myth that a "3-angle" valve job is a "performance" deal is totally misleading. Multiple angles on the valve may or may not be "special"; some engines come with valves that are back-cut, or have radiused margins, or whatever. The difficult part of valve work is getting the guides replaced or lined, and then sized to suit. I can't do that. By the time a machine shop does the guides, they might as well do the seats, too, 'cause professional work is all done on a--wait for it--Seat And Guide Machine! No professional uses hand-held grinders and stones any more, which is why that equipment is for sale to us hobby-folk. And for that matter, as a hobbyist, it's almost better to just buy new valves than to buy a valve grinder and try to re-face the old ones. (For the record: I bought some new valves for my Lumina 3.4 DOHC engine. I chucked 'em into my valve grinder for giggles, and found that the original, 160K valves after machining were better for concentricity than the "famous name" brand-new "stock" replacements. That wakes a guy right up.) Point being, the days of hobby-shop valve jobs are largely over unless you've got one or two thousand dollars for equipment that still won't repair worn guides. Don't get me started on the cost of valve seat pilots, especially carbide. Just plain ol' steel non-adjustable pilots are outrageous because you need so many of them--so if you're buying used equipment, make sure there's a bunch of USABLE non-adjustable pilots and matching stone-holders, and stones, and diamond-tipped stone truers, a DECENT valve-seat concentricity gauge, valve-tip grinder attachment, and all the other bits-and-pieces included. I'd kinda expect that pulling the valve through the seal to remove the valve will damage the seal. But I work in rubber and Viton seals, not Teflon. I'd look for wear marks. ID top and bottom is somewhat meaningless depending on HOW they're measured. Typically, it's the middle of the guide that wears the least. So if the top and bottom are the same, but bigger than the middle...the guide is worn. There's fancy (expensive) tools to measure guides. There's less-fancy (less expensive) tools that mostly work. "I" have gotten by with just using the valve seat pilots (NON-ADJUSTABLE) as Go-NoGo gauges. If the proper-sized non-adjustable pilot fits nice, and the +.001 pilot is tight...the guide is good. The cheapest way is to use a non-worn valve stem, slide it in the guide so that the head is X distance from the seat, and then wiggle the valve. Sometimes the service manual has specs for this procedure. The farther the head is away from the seat, the more the valve will wiggle. If the valve wiggles more "North--South" than "East--West", the guide is worn. Typically the guide wears in the same plane as the rocker arm. I'd be surprised if the magnetic base of the dial indicator didn't rock back and forth on the valve cover rail. Maybe you could dial-indicate the front and rear valves, getting the mag-base on the corner of the valve cover rail so it's stable. Then straightedge across those two to check the ones between them. I'm still learning this, too. Valve spring inserts (shims) will be needed to set proper spring height. They install with the radial scores against the head, or at least away from the valve spring. Remember that "stock" Buick valves are goofy, having a radius groove in the valve stem, and a matching radius in the valve keeper. It's more common to see "square-cut" grooves and keepers. Don't mix square-cut stuff with radius stuff. The cheap-and-common valve seat concentricity gauges have a little special fixture that slides down the pilot, and mounts a 0--.050--0 dial indicator. What damn good is a 0--.050--0 dial indicator when .005 runout would be wildly horrible? The indicator needle would barely move! Better concentricity gauges use a 0--.005--0 dial indicator, so that .001 or .002 runout is readily seen on the gauge. "Less is better" for measuring concentricity; but if the seat concentricity measurement is less than the stem-to-guide clearance, you "should" be OK. You absolutely do not want greater concentricity measurement than the stem-to-guide clearance. The valve either won't seal, or it'll wear the guide rapidly, or it'll flex the valve, leading to metal fatigue of the stem/head, and then Sudden Terminal Disassembly of the engine.
Just take them to a cyl head shop, and be done with it,..heads are generally gravy work for them and they will knock them out
I appreciate the advice to take it to a machine shop, but there doesn't seem to be a reputable one in Central ILL, let alone Peoria, and as soon as I say aluminum heads to the people I've talked to, they get even less confident in the shops they've heard of or used. Plus a lot of the fun for me is learning as much as I can and then applying that knowledge. Unfortunately it sounds like enough specialized equipment is required that the safest bet would be to send them back to TA Performance and ask they resurface the heads and do whatever else is necessary. I'll lap the valves first though just for the fun of it
If the guides are good, and the valves good enough to lap...vacuum test them, if they pass, slap on new valve seals, bolt 'em back on and run 'em. The hardened steel seat inserts in aluminum heads CAN wear out...but it's common to "get lucky" with them, so that all the wear is on the valve face (and hopefully not much wear.)
