Great read, obvious problem. Wrong seats.

We have all installed wrong, step up.

FB

 

I understand this as i was about to put my doubles over the stock seals and realised that they wouldn't fit the same and were REALLY snug. So i ordered new seals from GM with just the seal and no base and snapped on my new spring seats and and new seals and no binding issue to date with the PRC Doubles. TSP has been GREAT to me with no breaking issues. They are always fast at getting me my parts. I've bought ALOT of stuff from them to do my heads/cam setup. Only issues i've had was that to overnight some ARP studs was almost $100. The UPS guy said that it should have only been about $40-50. I'm not pissed though as they were there the next day and i got the car done Also the headers hit my steering shaft on the drivers header under hard cornering. i thought maybe it was a tire hitting but noticed some scratching on the steering shaft and on the header~Cole~

 

You can clearly see from the pic the difference between the stock and the new seat.

Sucks man but I think TSP is being reasonable.

 

If the coil binds, and the spring can no longer compress, the cam lobe is still gonna come up. Now the whoel rocker will be lifted since the spring cant go down. If the rocker arm dosnt break, the bolt dosnt strip and pull out, and the pushrod dosnt bend, then the only thing left is to pull out the whole damn rocker boss.

 

I have done heads and cam swaps. no big deal there not all that hard, as long as you know what your doing and pay attenshion to what you are doing. I really don't care how many swaps someone had done as to how knolageable you really are. I could do 1,000 swaps and have them all blow up so how would the number of swaps justify anything?

If you look at the picture of the springs then you "should" know what went wrong. It wasn't the same set up. he swaped out the springs and made a mistake. To me it sounds like you have no clue as to what you are talking about so maybe you should read all the posts and then put up your thoughts.

 

All I know is any halfway mechanic knows to use the hardened spring seats that came with the dual spring kit. They came with the set for a reason. Im no ASE mechanic but I installed my original REV springs with them and installed them when I replaced them with the Patriot duals. Dont ever give yourself reason for error when dealing with valvetrain geometry. Sorry but it sounds like TSP is being halfway reasonable.

 

this was a great read! sorry it costed the OP a nother set of heads but he saved me on having to do that junk to my own stuff oh so what which seals would i need to get from GM like a PN or something?

 

Sooooo....guy buys heads second hand, installs spring incorrectly, spring busts and puts a hole in the head cause of how he installed the springs and wants the vendor who he DIDNT get the heads from to fix it?





HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAHa.......I got my Mickey Thompsons used...u think i could get a refund from the MT company cause im not hooking?

 

After reading all, I would have to agree with Jason on this.. if the valve seal was to somehow be making contact with the spring and being pushed into the springs coil, which would and can cause coil binding!
Which in turn would cause a great amount of pressure and stress on the rocker stud and casting of the head area. And the end results could be that the stud would be pulled out if only pressed in, but if a threaded stud is used, it would cause the casting to break.

If someone modified somehting incorrectly with out checking.. you can't blame anyone but the person doing the mod incorrectly.

Jason has made a offer to assist.. which I find to be a great servcies of TSP.. for a 2nd hand set of heads too!

 

I gotta jump in on this one.

If you have an entire double spring kit and you decide not to install the seals and seats that come with them and retain the single spring seats and seals then too ******* bad when it breaks, its your own fault. Sorry but thats how it is, you cant **** up an install and try to blame the manufacturer.

I cant believe anyone tried to blame TSP for this. Complete ignorance. And then you refuse to take a sweet deal from TSP when they didnt do **** wrong. This thread is ridiculous.

 

I have never heard you cant use the factory one peice seals with the duals. It does make sense though. Its just hard to see this head breaking. Oh well, water under the bridge. Im no mechanic I just happen to like working on these cars. Lesson learned. I do still see the difference between the two heads as far as the port job goes. Everyone makes a mistake when working on cars. Ask TSP, they have made mistakes. I know they have.

 

Thanks Paul. Yea I totally understand the whole valve spring thing. When I bought my car back from the previous owner the dual PRC springs were already on the car. TSP can clarify that Steven Sleeper bought the MS3 and dual springs kit from them. Anyways he installed the springs on the one peice seals on ported factory 241's. I left them on when I bought the car. I had put 9k miles on them, ran 10's at the track and drove 7 hours each way to the LSX shootout last year. When I went to take the springs off they came right off no binding. At this point I didnt see any reason to take the brand new valve seals off that TSP sent the heads with because they are the same seals I had been driving on. Back in 2006 when Steve purchased the springs/ms3 cam he even asked TSP about this. They said they dont see a reason why the seals in question wouldnt work. He didnt even question them. I install the springs just like they were on the ported 241 heads everything went on just fine, spring slipped right on. Drove the car with the new heads and 400 miles later this is what happend. I like doing things right, everything on my car I have done myself. If I would have known anything about this I would have simply called TSP and said hey I need the PRC dual spring seats. I posted the pics on a local site before I even called TSP and all kinds of people said how TSP had a history of this happening. Tim, the guy I gave my heads to get his car going was on his 3rd set of PRC stage 1 LS6 heads. Thats just uncalled for. I guess im a victim of helping a friend out because I get bashed on for not directly buying these from TSP. The fact is they were new right out of the box from TSP. I felt like TSP should take some action into this. This was all BEFORE we learned about the valve spring problem. Its also not like I have never bought anything from them, like I have said before I counted 4k in reciepts I have from Texas-speed. Not only that but everyone I talk to I send them to TSP. They buy tons of stuff, I know because I install it. I have made Jason rich over the last few years by sending him customers. Yea I messed up, I didnt know any better in this situation. The only thing thats still in the open is how the porting job looks different from the two heads. Look at the two front intake ports. Check out the corners going down through the head, ones nice and smooth the other is half done it looks like. I took these right after pulling the intake off. I did not clean anything. My dad noticed it before I even said anything.



Texas-Speed says those two heads are IDENTICLE. How? They dont even have the nicer looking head (drivers side). I can tell you, I seen them in person and those two heads should look the exact same. Maybe this is totally my fault for the head breaking but I wonder if the bad looking port job on the passenger head in the pic would have anything to do with the break. TSP also told me about 4 months ago that I would be okay not using one of my main head bolts. They were serious. I went ahead and helicoiled the thread because im not going to half *** do something.

 

Why should TSP stand behing them?...because he CLAIMS his friend didnt run them?...once they leave the shop the person who bought them has a warranty but if he then gets rid of them, TSP cant keep track and make sure they were sold to the next guy 100% right or non touched.....Thats just retarded.......althought yes maybe there is a chance they were really never used and his friend did give them to him with out ever running them, TSP was not there for the transaction......coming on here bashing a company who was not at fault for shitty mechanic works is childish....Man up and take the blame.

 

As far as I can remember, there have been no major problems with any cars that the OP has worked on. He has also built several of his own cars (including a few different combos on this current car) and has ran good with almost all of them. Those springs on 241s with stock seals ran into the 10s. I seriously doubt it would if it was coil binding.

You can spare me the "no clue what you are talking about bullshit" as I know of valvetrain geometry and how to properly setup valve springs. What I was confused about is how coil bind could lead to a head breaking into chunks. The explanation above made sense and didn't have the douche bagness that yours did. Was it because I talked bad of your precious TSP? Not everyone has the best experience with them and several people I know (me included) have had bad experiences with them.

 

Were the dual springs new or off his old heads? What happened to the seats?

 

To me that dosent look like it would happen from coil bind, bad seals or anything else for that matter. The only conclusion i would have is weakening of the head from the porting that was done as you can see from the picture. When you look in the general area of where the rocker boss broke off there is very little left to that port at all. I dont know how you would expect it to really sustain even a moderate amount of seat pressure without much support in the casting. jmho

 

Think of it this way, when a lifter is going around the lobe of the camshaft it is almost at supersonic speed. When there is no more room to compress the spring or valve, that speed is applied 1.7 times that of the lobe on the cam. Mechanical leverage takes over and can exhert tons of pressure, just like a hydraulic cylinder!! There was pleanty of material left in the intake port, unless you have never seen a cutout cross sectional of a stock head. I have had my own negative customer service expeirences with TSP, but the info unfolded in this thread is not TSP's fault at all in my opinion.

 

Castings have "core shift" every factory head doesn't cnc exactly the same because of this. If the cnc program was made large enough to clean up every casting the port size would be very large 240+ cc's.

 

Just because you havent heard of it doent mean it isnt true. And it isnt hard to see the head breaking. The spring binds up and the next weakest area if that area on the head that broke.

Even if TSP did screw up the port job that has nothing to do with what happened to your head, that was your error. Next time use the parts provided in the kit, thats why it comes in a kit.

 

Those ports are completely different.....topic aside. Why can't anyone see that? Those are FAR from the same head...