I can certainly talk you through it but you will need a few tools. The big one is the spring compressor. Do you have one? If not you will have to rent one.
You will have to make a little tool. The card with the cam will tell the installed height. It is probably 1 7/8th or 1.875. I take a piece of bronze welding rod and make a piece with radiuses ends or rounded ends exactly this length. Then I take the lift say .580 add .060 for safety for a total of .640. Now subtract the .640 from the 1.875 and you get 1.235. This is the length of the second rod. I then join the 2 rods together with another piece about 3 inches long. Join the 2 rods in the middle roughly on a 45 degree angle with the 2 precise lengths paralled. All this is rough but the rods are exact. Solder them together to form a tool in the shape of a Z but the joining rod not touching the ends but connected near the middle. One end has the installed height and the other the open plus saftey value.
Now take a spring and retainer and put it in a vise and squeeze the spring totally closed. Measure from the end of the spring to under the retainer. This is the collapsed size of the spring. Again add .060 to it for safety. This value must be under the 1.235 height you got for the open value of your gage.
Also get a collection of shims from a speed shop and try to make an agreement to take back any un-used shims.
Now install a valve in the head with the valve seal in place. Be sure to use the plastic cap on the valve to protect the seal. Install the retainer with keepers and pull up on the retainer and insert the large end of the gage you just made. It should fit. If too loose add shims until it is just a snug fit. If the gage is too long you are in trouble and need a higher installed height. Look into different keepers or retainers.
Now that you have the installed height properly set remove the gage and push down on the retainer until it bottoms on the seal. Try the gage now and it should not fit. It should be too long. Another way is put the smaller gage in place while pushing down and there should still be clearance between the seal and the top of the retainer.
If anything doesn't work as I have said please get back to me so we can discuss the problem.
I might have overlooked something or you need to adjust something,
Do this for every valve, don't skip any. I have seen all but one valve have the necessary clearance but one was out and it dropped a valve.
Good luck
Norval

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Norval

David,Don't worry.You are good for the go.The seals will wear in rather quickly.With you Iconel exhaust valves and the good guides you have you are in great shape.Also the lube will get caught in the upper part of the PC seal and lube for quite some time.The ehaust centerline of your cam will not create excessive heat any way.

When building a smog casting like a 781 or 049 in my opinion it is not a good thing to stack up the shims under the valve spring where the exhaust valve rotater was.This allows the spring to walk around and puts undue stress on it creating much heat and fatiging the spring for the possible early retirement of it.Spring cups are made for this very purpose.I use them on the intake as well and have the heads machined down to avoid using any shims at all.

When using new springs a spring pressure checker should be used as all will not be exact.If you want for example 135 seat pressure after springs has heat cycled a few times they will loose a bit.Usually 5-7 lbs.So my advice is to set that example at 140-145 seat in anticipation of the loss of pressure after cycling a few times.
It is not as much seat pressure as it is open pressure on the nose of the cam.Do what it takes to get the open pressure where you want it as long as the seat pressure stay within reason.Within reason meaning to prevent the valve from bouncing off the seat when closing.
Mant variables from cam to cam as in lobe design and variable of building a BB vs Small block due to the difference in the weight of the vavle train. So more or less it is one motor combination at a time as for optimum results.

[Modified by mountainmotor, 8:32 PM 3/14/2002]

A question on the valve lift. The numbers given on the cam card are for the cam, right? So do I multiply that by the rocker arm ratio? Or is the lift given on the cam card the actual valve lift?

I don't know. On my comp cam card it has both. It gives the cam lift and lift after the 1.7 rockers. If you see lift figures like .343 this is cam lift so multiply it times the rocker ratio so you would have .343 times 1.6 or 1.7 = .583 valve lift. Look at the card and decide if this lift is reasonable. If it is around .500 this is valve lift. If it is in the .3-.4 range this is cam lift and needs to be multiplied.
Sorry I can't be more exact.

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Norval

Thanks.