Valve retainer/ keeper question?

[darndart]

I’ve got a 1985 360 that I pulled out of a wrecked Ramcharger many years ago. It appears to have been rebuilt at some point, it has brass freeze plugs, double row, timing chain, and is extremely clean inside. The heads are the older 915 J castings. But it appears that when the heads were rebuilt, newer style valves were used that originally had came with rotators on the exhaust. It has standard retainers on it now, but you can see in the picture that the valve spring height are much shorter on the exhaust valves than they are on the intake valves. I am planning on adding a summit cam and the comp 901–16 Springs. My question is, do they make an offset retainer or keepers to get the valve spring height at the proper level with the rotator style exhaust valves?

 

[Garrett Ellison]

That looks like someone has exhaust valves designed for use with rotators and shorter exhaust springs... If you are changing to 901-16 springs, you'll probably have to get new exhaust valves with the same number of retainer grooves as the intakes.

 

[PRH]

Get passenger car 4 groove valves and the matching locks.

 

[darndart]

Get passenger car 4 groove valves and the matching locks.

I just reaquired a set of J heads that I hand ported many years ago, to put on this engine. They are very low miles, 2.02/1.60 stainless valves, bronze guides, etc and ready bolt on, other than changing springs. I don’t know how good the porting job is, but they were good enough to run 11.90 with a 10:1 stock stroke 340 in a 3300 lbs Dart Sport.

 

[MOPAROFFICIAL]

I just reaquired a set of J heads that I hand ported many years ago, to put on this engine. They are very low miles, 2.02/1.60 stainless valves, bronze guides, etc and ready bolt on, other than changing springs. I don’t know how good the porting job is, but they were good enough to run 11.90 with a 10:1 stock stroke 340 in a 3300 lbs Dart Sport.

Check chamber volume/cc and make sure they don't kill thr cylinder pressure.

 

[Bewy]

Get locators/shims to put under the valves.

 

[H Monster]

Long story short, a few years back pulled an old engine to do an overhaul. Out of all the new stuff we put in it, what we failed to replace were the valve keepers and rotors. Overhaul lasted about 30 hours until one of the keepers failed and which time it dropped a valve into the cylinder with engine running. That was ugly.

The more I learn about the mechanism of internal combustion engines, the more I marvel that they work at all. In this case, the entire mechanism depending on a little chip of metal (valve keeper) the size of a fingernail clipping to hold it all together. There must be hundreds of such little parts. None of them very impressive, all of them critical and essential to the whole.

 

[PRH]

I just reaquired a set of J heads that I hand ported many years ago, to put on this engine. They are very low miles, 2.02/1.60 stainless valves, bronze guides, etc and ready bolt on, other than changing springs. I don’t know how good the porting job is, but they were good enough to run 11.90 with a 10:1 stock stroke 340 in a 3300 lbs Dart Sport.

My advice was based on what looked like an obvious mismatch of parts in the posted pic and the mention of the heads having previously had rotators.

The ex valves used on SB heads utilizing rotators take 2 groove keepers, and they sit lower on the stem than what you get with the normal 4 groove valves and locks.