LS-Vega

Has anyone encountered this? What would cause it?

pantera_efi

iTrader: (1)

Hi Vega, yes, my solution is to fit my Steel Guides. (16)

Your pictures are great though a picture of the Valve tip/stem would be good ?

Lance

KCS

iTrader: (20)

I’ve only seen that on heads that someone dropped.

Vemon

I just encountered this exact same failure on 821 LS3 heads. My rocker arm was also fractured half way between the pivot and the nose which cracked the spring retainer as well. The tall hat valve seal was completely chewed up. My machinist thinks it was due to improper clearance between the top of the valve seal and the spring retainer on my .629" lift cam. I'm not so sure about that theory because I think all my valves would be hitting. I had close to 1000 miles on the engine when this damage occurred. Has anyone seen this happen before? I am lucky my valve was not bent and stayed up with retainers in place.

LS-Vega

in my situation, I received the heads loose and was changing the valve springs when I discovered the broken guides, No telling what cam or rockers were used, I think it was a problem with the install of the guides because there was a dab of RTV holding on the seal, like someone was selling these because of a problem. I agree with you, there would have damage on more than one cylinder.

Vemon

After showing all the damaged parts to my machinist, he and I both agree that the failure initiated at the rocker arm first. The guide was the collateral damage. Pro tip, don't use rocker arms with no casting ID's or markings on them, that means they are Chinese knock offs.