5 rebuilds later and now the 4 th machinist to work on my heads.........my 390 heads gave up once again on my bbc 396 motor..........well at least i got almost 6,000 miles before the passenger side lost 6 guides...........and yet the drivers side is perfect...........

these heads have been tossing valves guides out since 1998........each time they have been taken in for new stock guides......and new valves a few times(complete sets) other times just replace what ever valve is gone...........

i have replaced everything to new one these heads more then i like to care to admitt.....i have spent somewhere in the 1,200 range in rebuilds and repairs.......

i have put in many new sets of push rods, one new set of guides, three sets of rocker arms, checked for the oil flow to the head which is more then enough, checked for proper valve train set up..........replaced the springs once............

it is never the same valves it jumps around...........and this time it so happens just to effect one head.........and it just so happens to affect all the off valves.........

the last machinist replaced 7 valves and didnt even bother to match them to my current cut down stem design....and even he put in two other different designs on top of that so now i have 3 kinds of valve designs in my heads.......stupid machinist should be knocked out.............then on top of that he shoved the damnnn guides way to far into the bowl area just so he didnt have to cut the tops off for cam lift clearence.........so my cut down stems was really useless to have since they sat in the guide itself...........

well glen has been my guy to go for now for about 1 1/2 and i have yet to have to take anything back because of screw ups.......so now he is going to fix my current mess.........he thinks the bronze guides are the way to go now... and he was going to set up the cutters to cut the valve guide back out of the bowl area so the porting of the head will be usefull once again and going to match up the valves....so i have all the same valves again.........the last machinist failed to put in harden shims in the spring pocket so my head was getting chewed up by the dampner.........on top of that he didnt even bother to set spring height........

not sure why the valves guides have been giving out............i have ran my other sets of heads and had zero problems with the same push rods guide plates rocker arms......and i have had about 5 sets of different heads on this motor over a 13 year period but these heads just keep eating up the guides.........

i'll give them one more shot with bronze guides after that they are junk to the trash.

this should be common sense for a machinist, but a valve job MUST be done when changing guides, no if ands or buts.

if you dont the seat will be off, and that could cause the problems you've been having.

Something is way out of wack. Go back and check everything. There is no reason for a BB to do that unless you are trying to use an .820 lift roller with 1000# of spring pressure on a street car.