Here is a picture of my freshly rebuilt AMC head with valve guide:
Stock AMC head from a Boston Bob engine:
Stock VW head for full comparison:
Well in order to make sure I cover all bases in case you want more information I will give you the background of why I became concerned with the valve guide length. I put the engine together with a Canadian remanufactured bottom end that was left as is with less than about 30,000 miles on it but was putting a lot of combustion gas into the coolant. I re ringed a set of OE pistons and cylinders from another engine to replace the low compression pistons in this one. The head seem to be my stumbling point now, The heads are AMC castings that at least one has spent some time in a GEX engine and were passed over by Boston Bob for use as new AMC heads were cheaper and easier than having these rebuilt as the guides were waaaay out of spec. Well as I got the head in a trade 0 cost there so I purchased a full set of SI swirl polished valves and a set of their guides as I suspected the ones in the head before they went to the machine shop. I used a shop local to me who's head mechanic used to build race beetle engines, as I couldn’t find any one else I put my faith in them. The heads came back fine and looked good. They sat around for a year before the engine went together and ran. The engine ran great went to temp at least once and ran up and down the street fine I took it around my parents field as its not registered and while creeping back to the drive way it stalled. I was able to get the van started again and get it to its car port and had to head home for the week for work the next week I found one push rod dropped half out of its cup in the rocker arm and was bent but every thing else appeared fine. I replaced the push rod was extra careful re installing the pushrods thinking I might have not seated the one right when I built the engine, or the lifters that always seem to bleed down had given me a bad initial adjustment that caused the issue. So I put in a spare push rod and re adjusted all the valves fired it up and the van ran great. I took it for another jaunt down the street to feel it run and get some speed hit the end of the 3/4 mile of road and went to make the u turn and it dies, and would not restart. Got it home to find the same push rod had dropped. After further investigation I found it was worse than I thought.
Here is what I was greeted by when I removed the valve cover:
Here is what I found when I compared the valve springs on that side:
so after wallowing in the thought that I was going to need to pull the engine pull the heads and have them re done for too tight valves I picked up an abused Boston Bob engine to reseal and seal up the oil leaks and hoped to run that while I worked on this engine again and while I worked on that on weekends a member on TOS had a similar issue with the valves sticking on a Syncro he was resurrecting after sitting for much longer. He spoke to his machinist and his machinist said they found black deposits on valves of cars that had sat for a while and when he removed his intake he found exactly that so as mine had also sat for a wile while the engine was waiting for me to finish college and have time and money then get a job where I wanted to work on it so I figured what the heck might as well check and lo and behold there was black gunk that wasn’t there when the engine was being assembled so I emptied the tank and am going to put a set of rebuilt injectors in also. After removing the intake and trying to look at the valve I found some reaaaly long valve guides and thought it time to ask some who know much more than I aka all of you. Next to do on the Syncro is replace the fuel level sensor again (I think for the second time my father thinks for the third) and hopefully drive this SOB.
Sorry for the long post I just want my van drivable and not the laughable vehicle it currently is
