I spent a better half of the night cleaning up the heads last night. Today I took the valves, springs, and rockers off the passenger side head. Re lapped the valve seats and replaced all the valve stem seals. Ill do the driver side head tonight and clean up the block surfaces tomorrow. Then Friday ill start putting it all back together.

 

Are you going to take the heads to a machine shop to get dusted flat?

 

Took a straight edge across it and it was flat. No un even areas anyway. Just needed a wire brush to get some leftover gasket material off.

Got the other head valve lapped and installed new valve seals. I'm gonna start cleaning up the block tomorrow and put it all together Friday hopefully.

 

A straight edge won't tell you if the head is warped. You want to lay the head on a perfectly flat thick steel bed (machinists bench, industrial table saw, etc.) and check the whole perimeter for any gaps with a feeler gauge.

 

^I don't have those resources...

 

Find out what a machine shop would charge you just to check to see if the surfaces are true. Can't imagine they'd want very much at all. Would suck to find out shortly down the road that the cause of your failed head gasket (and replacement) was because of a warped head. Unless you enjoy taking the engine apart over and over.

 

FYI, A machine shop would use a surface plate. It is a large piece of granite ground and lapped flat.

There is a process you can use with a straight edge that uses a series of X patterns with the straight edge. I was shown it a long time ago but I have always had access to a Surface plate. If you want to drive up to Allentown PA you can use mine LOL.

How tight are you valve guides? Lapping will not hurt anything but it is not going to restore much power if the valves are sloppy in their guides.

 

The guides had no play. The valves were actually kinda tight in them

 

I am not sure I trust you measuring method. No clearance would fail in a matter of minutes. It is not possible to have no valve guide clearance in a engine that was running. Exhaust valves get very hot very quickly. They expand very quickly. No clearance would destroy the guide.

If you did not check this with a dial indicator then you did not check. There are guys that can feel the different between .001" and .003" clearance but it is a skill that can take years and a lot of valve jobs to get.

 

Well I mean I'm no master mechanic didn't have any play lol. So they must be okay?