I'm glad you told me that. It will make me look a little harder for it.

If they are all that rare, it shouldn't take much to machine up the fixture that will allow you to use a standard dial indicator. That's all they were, a fixture and a dial indicator.

 

Wait a minute! I looked on ebay and saw two sets. One was bid up to $6.50 and had the X Base Adapter which is the one you need for a Y Block. The other had started bidding at $25, but did not appear to have an X model adapter.

Doesn't sound like anything prohibitively expensive if you want your engine to run well and sound good.

 

Well I stand corrected if they sell that cheap, last time I saw one it went for at least 10 times that much...

 

MBDiagMan, if you are handy at making useful tools, we (Y's guys) could use an SBC type micrometer gauge for checking installed spring heights. None of the gauges offered by suppliers works on 239-312, and the remaining methods are time consuming at best.

 

You can't use an inside mic for this? Is that what you are saying is too time consuming. I can see where a snap gauge would be time consuming, but it would seem that an inside mic would be about the same time spent.

What am I missing here?

 

This is way too complicated. first get your valves adjusted. Get a flex socket, a .017 feeler gage, a .019 feeler gage. take the valve cover off. Start the engine, warm it a bit. make sure the .017 gage goes in the rocker gap. Make sure the .019 will not. Turn the adjusters with the engine running. This is in the 59 car manual. Don't catch you fingers in the mechanism, or burn your hand on the exhaust manifold. The feeler gage holder should be bent up at 30 deg to keep your hand away from the exhaust. Adjust the valves from left to right, then go to the other head. This is what the 59 car manual says to do, and has always worked fine for me. Actually you used to could buy a .017-.019 step type feeler gage, and do it with one tool. I have one. All this about cams. I've been running the same cam for 35 years and a couple of motor overhauls, the y-block did not load the cam or lifters very much and the lifter bottoms don't even go concave like a chevy does. After that if your engine is still popping, start looking at valve timing, spark timing, all that hard stuff. If valve lift is not enough, Y blocks mostly wore out the inside of the rocker arm or the bottom of the rocker shaft due to no lubrication due to the oil passage being plugged up in the head- I had an external oiler from Sears on my engine for years, until the modern SC and later oils unplugged the passage in the head again.

 

Funny you mention it. My previous experience is with snap (telescoping) gauge. APITA. Yesterday found a good set of inside mic's so maybe they will work better.