TVWilkes

It looks to me like the valve tip wasn't hard enough wearing out down to the valve locks.

disc0monkey

iTrader: (10)

is that common?

ShevrolayZ28

iTrader: (4)

I'd say the valve hardening issue was not very common, and that this type of failure would have started gradually and I think most people would have heard the problem progressing, worsening over time; IMO you would have had a very noisy valve train over a considerable period of time before the tips wore down to the point were the valve dropped.

Furthermore, I think it would be unlikely that your heads were assembled with only one bad valve. Do the rest of your valve tips look OK?

My memory is a bit fuzzy, so you might want to read these two threads I have linked below.

I should mention that AFR was not the only company that had the misfortune, and to no fault of their own, of using these bad valves in their heads. They were, however, as far as I know, the only company that went public on the issue, and came up with a solid customer support policy.

https://ls1tech.com/forums/generatio...tip-issue.html

https://ls1tech.com/forums/generatio...ad-owners.html

Harley-Davidson88

iTrader: (71)

I've seen retainers and locks like that...have seen the valve drop like that too. Mine was a missed downshift which resulted in an over rev. There will probably be some other retainers/locks with some marks on them too if that's the case.

FWIW...the failure (valve drop) didn't happen at the time of the missed gear. It happened a few days later while cruising down the interstate in 6th with the cruise set at 70.