is it worth the money to get a 3 angle valve job done on a set of stock gt-40 heads. motor is completely torn down and im taking the heads in to get them cleaned up. would there be any benefits of a valve job on a medium modded motor.
if the valvejob isnt right, its not going to run to its potential. ive seen cars with otherwise similar combos where one had OOTB gt40s and outran cars with a decent set of heads because the VJ on the good heads sucked and the VJ on the lesser heads was on target. its very important.
I'm a firm believer that my car makes the power it makes partly because my guy did an excellent valve job on my C9 heads.
It's funny, i know a guy with a 347 with AFR 165s and a Edelbrock RPM intake and he made almost identical numbers as me and he is SICK about it. He can't believe my 40 year old heads matched his AFRs.
thanks for the info. i was not sure if i would gain anything because i dont have a set of exspensive "high flow" heads. i was going to take them to Livernois Motorsports in Dearborn, MI. anyone had any expierence with this shops work? I have heard they are a reputable shop.
how does one know whether the machine shop in their area with worth a crap or not? I mean... what criteria can you use to tell? Personally, I wouldn't be able to look at a set of completed heads and know whether or not it was done correctly.
im on the same page as dontgivaratz. how do you know what a "good valve job looks like". anyway Livernois motorsports seems to be pretty well known and were featured in both 5.0 and mustangs and fast fords magazines a few. mos ago BUT they gave me a price of $240 to do the valve job which i thought was fair but (again) they want $600 to disassemble, valve job, check, deck (if needed), clean and reassemble. does $600 sound like alot to do that? how hard is it to disassemble and reassemble heads? i guess i dont know what to look for or do when and while dis and reassembling heads. maybe take them apart, bring them to a local machine shop to have them cleaned and check, then take them to livernois for the valve job and put them back together myself. I dont F in know. what do you guys think? help me out here. my little winter project turned into a large exspensive one
if you have some spare time you can take an engine rebuild class at your community college. I took a course and rebuilt my own heads (did a 5 angle valve job too!), ported/polished the intake/exhaust/combustion chambers as well. It was like 250 bucks for the class. 2 nights a week for 2 hours a class.
dang, a class huh,? is rebuilding heads that involved? is it something an avereage garage wrench can do or is it best to be left to the pros. i would love to take a class but no time for that. i guess livernois is well known but a little pricey. you get what you pay for though.
If there were a class that teaches JUST re-working cylinder heads, I'd be all over it. Otherwise, how would you know if the work you did was worth the time, effort, and the cost of the original heads? What I mean is: Unless you were able to flow test those heads before and after, how would you know if you accomplished anything other than wrecking a perfectly good set of heads?
I know enough to know that if it's done wrong that you can do more harm than good. There's more to it than just opening up the ports and removing metal.
i was refering to rebuilding heads as in valves, rockers, springs etc. i would never attempt to machine my own heads. i would definetly leave that to the shop. but as far as taking apart and putting together, how involved is that going to be
the class I took had the equitment to do valve jobs, instructor showed my how to do 2 valves, then I did the rest, its actually real easy to do, basicly the same as turning a set of brake rotors.
yes, i agree i took an engines class in college, and now head work doesnt' scare me haha, if i had the tools i would do a 3 angle valve job myself, it was actually pretty simple, and as far as the rest of the head goes, its all easy as long as you have a valve spring compressor