Why don't you just rip out those stock studs and put in some normal ones? 7 years ago I rebuild some 351W DOOE heads, that I had planned on using on my 302. I ripped out the stock studs by stacking a whole bunch of washers and then tightened the nut which pulled them up. Standard Chevy 3/8 studs have the exact same shank and just a tad longer. I then pressed them in to the same height as the Ford ones.


I did however sell them before I bolted them on to an engine as I realized they wouldn't support the engine I decided to build.

 

I know I have in the past and stuck lets say .030 between the stem and
rocker arm and yes it will skip (valve open a little) then it will settle down
after the lifter compensates. And then there is a tool in which you fully
collapse the lifter and measure that which tells the lift.

 

Yeah...when the valves were first hanging open I thought it was just that a lifter needed to settle down. But after several runs up to temp over the course of several days as I tried to adjust timing and carb, it never got better.

I checked and double checked, and in some cases checked again and again everything else that anybody could think of that might cause the problems but it all came down to the valves. Now everybody (from guys here to mechanics, to Melling's tech) says it's the valves. The only ones who haven't out and out admitted it are at the machine shop. But they're fixing it with no cost to me, so I take that as acceptance and move on.

Hopefully the poly-locks come today and do the job. Then we can put all this behind us and get down the road!

Jim