I am getting ready to rebuild my cylinder heads and after doing a search and finding nothing, was wondering if anyone knew if there was a complete valve spring kit available. I know I can piece one together but getting a complete kit would be pretty cool. I am looking for everything in one kit: valve springs, retainers, seals, locks, seats, you know the whole enchilada.

If there is a kit that even includes some aftermarket valves I would be interested in knowing about it.

The heads are off of a 92Z with the 350.

Thanks in advance,

Eric

 

there are no rebuild kits for heads. how are you going to go about replacing the seats? retainers and locks seldom wear out and there are way too many applications to find springs in kit form. buy a set of springs to match your cam and retainers to match your springs. there's no need to replace valves just to be replacing them, have the valves and seats reground. while the heads in the shop have the guides checked. if you're running more than .47 or so o nthe cam trash the pull out studs and go with screw in and you can have the spring pockets opened up too.

 

ede thanks for the reply. As for the replacing the seats let me explain. My brother has a mustang with aluminum heads and when we rebuilt his heads (along with the engine) there were seat inserts that we replaced that are used to keep the valve spring seat area from being damaged. I just figured that this was going to be the case with my iron heads.

Regarding the valves I have seen some posts that talk about aftermarket valves with the cutback on the stem and how that really improves flow. Since I am still running the stock L98 cam and will be doing some mild porting would there be any benefit (for the cost) to installing aftermarket valves or would I be better off keeping the stock valves?

Eric

 

you're talking about spring cups not valve seats. valves seats are a press fit insert. i've have a trick for removing them but no idea how hard it is to get them back in, i let a shop do it. the valves you refer to are manely pro flow or something like that, about 12 dollars each. i guess every little bit helps, but wiht a stock cam you'd be ahead to spend the money towards a cam and other mods.

 

Thanks for the info about the valves. At $12 per valve, your right, that money is better spent on the cam.

Thanks.

 

http://store.summitracing.com/partde...AN%2D10722%2D8

http://store.summitracing.com/partde...AN%2D10765%2D8

They're really not that bad... about $8 or $9 each, not a whole lot more than stock replacement ones.

They do make a HUGE difference in flow, especially at low lifts.

The reason nobody makes a "kit" like that is that there's entirely too many variations. Although, it does seem like it would be pretty easy to package up some Comp 981 springs and all the hardware that goes with them, or the equivalent from Crane or Lunati or Ultradyne or whoever, along with those valves and maybe some rockers, which would fix up an awful lot of typical street build-ups. But as cheap as most people are, everybody seems to be reluctant to do a valve train right, it probably wouldn't sell too well. It's hard enough to get people just to buy springs, let alone all the rest of that stuff. Valve train parts are not big, or shiny, or chrome, or visible when one opens the hood, or sounds like a blower, or a buzzword, or any of that other useless stuff that people waste their money on, instead of stuff that makes their car go faster.

 

RB, thanks for the links. At those prices I think I will be making a call to Summit. Thanks!