Re: Valve Spring inserts

["Tom Harais" <tjhemh@domain.elided>]

Eldon:

Your belief in differnces between "regular" and "A" engines makes sense.
I've often heard that the "A"s dropped the stellite valve seat inserts
(sometimes it's said, only on the intakes and not the "hotter" exhaust
valve seats). But, this seemed contradictory for two reasons. Everyone else
was going to hardened valve seats at the time the "A"s came out, due to
reductions, and eventual elimination of, lead in gasoline. And two, I have
never heard that IH engines after a certain year weren't long lived. I've
heard of '76s with 300,000 miles and the heads had never been off the
block. My thought was if the valves were sealing that well for that long,
they used damn good valves and had hardened seats or  inserts.

One of these days I'll pull the original heads of my '76 with 304A and see
what's what.

Tom H.