When I grind valve seats and want a nice finish when I get done, I take a strip of abrasive cloth about 1/4 inch wide and 4 inches long. I place it between the seat and stone with the abrasive side facing the stone. I hold the cloth…
Dale Beran The Parts Bin Ord, NE
We have used a Lisle hand held keeper installer tool to assemble small import heads for many years. It can be hard on your hand pushing on the tool to get the keepers to seat, especially on aftermarket springs that are stiffer than the originals. But it is…
Jake Sampson Sampson Racing Engines Inver Grove Heights, MN
I started making custom pressure testing plates out of 1” thick HDPE high density polyethylene (same material as kitchen cutting board). This stuff is cheap, machines like butter and can be worked like wood. I cut it with a table saw and use a head gasket…
Scott Ouellette Powerplay Machine Wilmington, MA
After magnafluxing, cover the magpowder in the crack with a couple coats of clear paint to retainer the powder. This works much better for showing the parts owner, you won't have to magnaflux the part again for them to see the problem. Terry Kiehnau…
Terry Kiehnau Terry's Rebuilding, LLC Green Bay, WI
My head porter and I developed this tool to keep all valve job bowl cuts identical. Very simple to make and quickly scribes exactly where to make cuts. Scribe is made from a carbide point from pocket metal scribe. It is epoxied into a drilled hole in the…
Eric Gartner Performance Off Road Shadyside, OH
We all use vacuum to test valve to seat seal. I use a handheld Mityvac in conjunction with an electric vacuum pump. By taking the vent cap off top of Mityvac, I was able to hook the pump directly to it. Now I have the ability to…
Scott Ouellette Powerplay Engine and Machine Wilmington, Ma
I fabricated an easy to clean steel topped cylinder head bench. Wrapping over the edge allowed for drilling holes, then inserting adjustable pipe holders. I can easily position any passenger car or light truck head for various work performed, from grinding seats to valve spring installation. Gary…
Gary Muller Gary’s Custom Engines & Cylinder Heads Sterling, AK
When checking volume on large chambers or ports, I fill them with precision steel ball bearings. It requires less time to fill and less fluid. Simply calculate the volume of the ball you’re using and multiply by the number added. Add that to the…
Ron Flood Cedar Machine North Branch, MN
We had to do a combustion chamber repair on some CNC machined LS3 cylinder heads that dropped an intake seat. We wanted it to perfectly match the other CNC chambers. After the new seats were installed and the valve job was cut to the proper…
Jake Sampson Sampson Race Engines Inver Grove Heights, MN
Removing valve stem seals in some import heads can be trouble. It's really a problem when you can't get pliers on it because it's deep in a tube or just not accessible. First get a sample valve seal and then find a deep 12-point socket…
Jimmy Casares Hubbard Machine Hayward, CA