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L92 823 heads valve stem clearance to retainer and keeper
Hello,
I just received a set of remanufactured L92 heads 823 casting for a refresh of my Yukon Denali. This is my first foray into the LS platform, but far from my first teardown and reassembly of an engine. Upon inspection it appears that when the valve stems were ground to set installed height, that some of the intakes ended up a little close to the keepers, and even are below the top of the retainer. Could someone a little more knowledgeable take a look at my pictures, and let me know if this would be OK to run in this condition.
Good catch, that should not be that bad. Stock valves do have a short distance between the keeper groove and the valve tip, but the keepers should be sitting much lower. Either the keepers are wrong, like someone put in +.050” keepers in, or the valves were ground down way too much. If the keepers are wrong, thats an easy fix. If the valves are ground that much, there may not be any of the hardened tip left and the valves would be scrap metal.
Thank you for your reply. It is exactly what I was afraid of. Looking down into the gap between the keepers, it appears the valves were ground down too far. I don't feel I should have to disassemble these to measure them. The price was good, and they were sold to me as remanufactured heads, ready to run, with no core required. The customer service has been great, as I actually have three heads right now. One had a nick in the web between combustion chambers and they sent out a replacement right away. I just don't see these going 100k+ miles without the rocker tip eventually coming in contact with the keeper on several of the valves.