Valve Job

Little late on posting, but a couple of weekends bag I finished up on my valve lapping job.

Step 1: Cleaning the valves and head

This took a long time and a lot of methods. At first I soaked the valves in sea foam, then scrubbed with a brass brush and whereas this helped a little, I was not making significant progress. In the end, I used a brass brush on the end of a drill for cleaning the combustion chamber. The valves, I actually put on my drill and used a small screw driver to scrape off carbon as the valve spun. This is probably making some purists cringe, but it seemd to work well without any visible damage that I could see.

 

 Step 2: With everything as clean as I can get it without spending many more additional hours than I care to, I went out and bought a lapping tool and some lapping compound.

After about a minute of lapping each valve I used some prussian blue afterwards to check the surfaces. The mating surfaces were looking pretty good. I assembling the head without the valve seals, tested for leaks with kerosene and came away without any. So everything looking good, I re-assembled with my new viton valve seals. Now I just have to get back to attempting to clean the gasket mating surfaces and I can get the head back on.

New Seat Build - Part 1

Ok, like a small child or a bird, I cannot focus on one thing at a time. I am revisiting the seat and have read so many wonderful threads of fiberglassing success that I think im going to try my hand at this. So, some florist foam, painters tape, aluminum tape, a huge mess and one angry girlfriend later, this is where I am at: