Valve Noise

dpson

dpson

Senior Member
As a follow up to my recent "Bent Valve" posting, in checking the valve clearances for the other seven valves (non-adjustable tappets), five were good ranging from .013 to .015, however valve #2 (intake) was .025 and valve #1 (exhaust) was .052. Yup, no typo .052. Most of the bell end was ground away (not worn away, see photo), so much was gone they has to insert a stip of metal around the end of the valve to keep the valve spring keeper from hitting the tappet. I'm scratching my head as to how someone could get the valve clearance so wrong? No wonder there was a loud clacking coming from the front of the engine.

Also found the answer on grinding the valve stems, picked up an old Kwik-Way valve grinder on Craigslist for $80. It's an older model (P), made between 1939 and 1950, still works great. These were a well made product, it has 18 oiler locations. BTW: Kwik-Way is still in business out in Iowa.
 
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I learned to grind valves on a machine like yours in high school back in the, er, past...
 
.052" ! I'm surprised it was put together that way. Well, actually, I'm not really surprised at how things are put together anymore. Its amazing what some folks do.
 
From what I understand the chassis this engine came out of was a long stalled restoration from the 1970's that never got finished and the coupe body and fenders were removed and sold to a hot-rodder a couple years ago. The engine had been run very little after being worked on and was perhaps an amature restoration. The only thing I can think of was that the tappet was on a raised portion of the cam when the valve #1 clearance measurement was taken. You might think that having to remove that much from the end of the valve might have been a clue something was wrong. The engine seemed to run okay but with that much clearance it couldn't have had all the valve opening duration it needed to run correctly on the #1 cylinder. Anyway it will be fixed and should be a lot less noisy.
 
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