Valve Job Gone Awry, Need 1800 Head

[HOLLYWOODSPIDER]

Hi, all.

Today has been a crappy day.

I have been working over the past several weeks on my 1978 spider. I needed a smog check, but had a major manifold leak. I tracked the problem down to 2 stripped exhaust stud holes. I removed the head ant took it to a local, well-reputed machine shop. I decided to have a complete valve job done while it was out.

I reassembled the engine myself, but was unable to get any compression. I had the car towed to the local shop to have the valves adjusted, thinking that tight valves may be my problem.

The mechanic just called me and told me that the machinist took off so much material during the valve job and resurfacing of the cam tower mating surfaces (which I did not ask them to do) that my valves cannot be adjusted to the proper clearances.

The cam is holding 2 of the valves open at all times, even with the thinnest shims installed. The machine shop is claiming that they never touched the top side of the engine, but when I got it back it had been freshly machined.

this sucks. I was doing all of the work myself because I'm broke (who isn't right now?). I'm out $220 for machine work, $100 for a gasket set and guides (thank you to Mark for the speedy service), not to mention the day I had to take off of work to do the reassembly, and now I've got to come up with a replacement head and another gasket set!!!

Does anyone have a good used head? It's a California 1800.

[So Cal Mark]

Ted, call me at the shop for some options

[racydave]

sorry to hear about your bad luck... really, that sucks!

[pope]

Did you pay with credit card?

[HOLLYWOODSPIDER]

No. I wish I had, and definitely will next time. A friend was picking it up for me, and she paid cash.

I'm going to take the head, cams and all, over to the machine shop and show it to them. They offer a 12-month, 12k warranty, but of course it's only valid if I had had them do the entire job. They're telling me "You put the cams in wrong."

[So Cal Mark]

Ted
they can take some of the top of the valve stem for clearance. My guess is they sunk the valves into the seats and that effectively raised the valves. Another option would be to install reground cams; the basecircle is reduced on those. Or, double gasket the cam boxes (least desirable option)

[engineerted]

I agree with Mark, sounds like a good time for some performace cams. You could also try two installing two cam tower gaskets.

Ted