Time to learn a new skill.
I am in the process of building a new motor for the eight and a half. I have been thinking about the valves a lot lately. Wondering just what all is involved in a simple 3 angle valve job and how difficult the actual act is and what equipment is neccesary.
I have a co-worker who is some kind of idiot savant/mechanical genius/epic bodger. In his current list of cars is a Vespa 400, 53 Studebaker pickup, 78 Corvette, a 50's Studebaker Hawk and a 69 Camaro. He also collects antique tractors and all sorts of other vintage things. If anyone had the info I needed it would be him. I asked about valve seat grinding and the next day he showed up at work with this box
This awesome 1950's cantilever box is stuffed full with equally old valve seat grinding tools.
The grinder itself is just an old drill motor with a hex drive
The arbors are pretty much what I expected them to be
The pilots were a bit of a suprise. They wedge themselves into the valve guides. Since this setup is so old it does not have any pilots that would fit anything as small as a 7mm valve guide. So I cannot use this, but I can learn from it.
And the stone shaper is simpler yet better than I had imagined.
I aqcuired a few items earlier this week when I decided to try this
The Die is a very odd size. That makes them either very expensive or very cheap. I got lucky and found it cheap. 9/16"-16 to suit grinding stones made for old black and decker valve seat grinders. A 1.125" stone, a new 7mm drill bit and some 7mm drill rod.
Some scrap 1" aluminum rod sacrificed itself to the lathe to become my arbor
Put it all together and I have this
The end is smiply 3/8" so it fits into a right angle pneumatic drill
Ready the junker cylinder head.
Eeewww! Yet another 850 head that was stored for decades uncovered outside with no carb.
I did a bit of googling and found this picture of the three angles
Shaped the stone to 30 degrees and made a cut
Next was some Dykem and 45 degrees
And finally 60 degrees and some more layout fluid to show where I am removing material
And finally all three angles after removing the dykem
I used a rough "general purpose" stone and I think for the good head I would step up to a finer finishing stone.
I am going to take this head to some more knowledgeable people than I to get their opinions on the viability of my homebrewed valve job and hardware. I am pretty convinced that I can do this. Hell I already have, but I think I might need to learn a bit more about the angles and their locations/widths.
OK OK I know that these days valve seats are cut with carbide and no longer ground to shape, but a neway carbide cutter itself costs several orders of magnitude more than my total engine rebuild. Yes I am sure that grinding is far inferior for many super awesome reasons but This has cost me about $25 so far and looks to be working.
Any comments on this? I am interested to hear opinions and constructive criticism/tips.