Trust me. I tried hard, soft, fast, slow, the almanac, moon signs, the angle of the sun, etc. The teeth from his tranny are still laying in my yard down there. I guess I just don't have "the touch".

 

Sorry to hear of your experience Ross, and thanks for relating it here. My dad has a '50 Lincoln with the big V8 flat head and we always used lead additive in it not knowing if the previous owner had changed the valve seats (someone had the heads off, at least). But I'd not trust that stuff for any extended period of highway speeds.

And a slap on the back for not parking it in the garage out of disgust or frustration. I've seen that happen in the past after someone put a lot of work into a vehicle only to have something go wrong after it was done.

I've got most of the receipts from my rebuild, so I'm going to review them and see if there is any indication of the seats being updated, or/and call the PO to see if he remembers. Otherwise this one will get pulled apart at some point for inspection and upgrading if needed. As someone else said, after putting a lot of work into it I'm going to want to drive it 'til I die.

 

blip the throttle and ease it in just as it hits bottom

 

Tried that too. Multiple times. Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into a Bob's clutch talk. I was just razzing him back after he promoted the bullet-proof six.

 

Ross, I've committed to a spare 226 from Josh - going to drop that in while I rebuild my existing worn out 226. Will document everything I can figure out... some research I did said hardened seats really didn't exist until the early 70's. can't for the life of me think the 226 would have hardened seats stock. Do you really think there is a chance they would be? How do you tell a hardened seat from an unhardened? (oldest iron I worked on before all had hardened seats late 80's SBFs.

 

I've moved BunnyBlue52's 4-sp into gear maybe 3 seconds after pushing in the clutch, no grinding whatsoever. Hell, 1st gear on all these trannies is spur-gear!

Let me tell you, if I weren't so pissed off at it sullying my Big Trip, I'd have been tempted to push it into an arroyo... I had about 30 hours to think about what the problem could possibly be on the way home, and valve seat recession never occurred to me.

Just before the trip, I traded emails with a boyhood friend who it turns out drove his '52 F-1 from Chesapeake Bay to Chicago in '75 -- before the internet, before cell phones, and back when we were fresh out of school, not quite penniless, but not flush either. And he did it in the winter, thru snowstorms! His advice to me about my trip was simple: He said back then there was a good chance we'd end up stranded in some jerkwater town, eaten by coyotes out on the plains, or have to hoof it for miles. Now, we're old farts, and we can solve any problem by slapping down the plastic... a lot of truth in that!

 

Doc - won't continue on that too much more, but last comment. you got to be in touch with your inner driver.... you soft fingered surgeon types, never shifted a kenworth or a mac eh :P

 

See, I told you so

 

Actually, I have. I lived a pretty typical rough country boy life before I had to start manicuring my right finger for those delicate rectal exams. I even drove one of those old B models once. Not gonna say I did it well......just did it.

 

A Kenworth doesn't grind that bad... and...

 

Son the 1980's and the word OLD should not be used in the same sentence LOL

 

Ford's V8's from the '30's and '40's had hardened seats from the factory, right up until mid-50. I just don't have any experience with the 6's, but I'd bet they had them too. Remember, Lead didn't become widely used until the late '40's

Hardened Valve Seats

 

rule of thrum in the machine shop business is that most all heads that were used before 1972 did not have hard seats installed in the heads

there are heads that come with hard seats from the factory and are mostly 3/4 ton and above.

big block chevys duallys have 2 different gvw's as the lighter gvw will not have hard seats and the heaver gvw will with same castings numbers

I have seen flat heads with hard seats installed from the factory and in cars and light trucks as many blocks were switched in the rebuilding industry

after 1972 and above the manufactors knew about unleaded gases and used what we call flame inducted seats whitch is an induction heater that they put on the seats and heat the cast iron up to raise the carbon to the surface and make the cast iron wear like hard seats the problem with this that you don't know how thick the induction parts are.

we have see them as little as .015/.030 deep and in dart heads as much as 3/8 in and are very hard to machine and make the valves seal.

if you don't have hard seats in your heads you only need to have them installed in the exhaust

we have done this on all our engine rebuilds and had no warrenty problems whatsoever this is the way to go if you don't want to pull and diassemble you engine at a later date because of valve seat recession

 

hey guy's .. good to see this .. I lost oil pressure on the highway last month ,,and neef to pull my motor after seeing this ,,I am going to make sure I have this checked out ..she knocks when I fire her up then quiet's as pressure builds .the comment was made about hydraulic lifters ..hey are not available for our flatty's are they ??

 

I found a picture I took of the valve seat in my truck's original 226.

The previous owner decided to 'fix' a radiator leak by pouring way too much of some type of 'Stop Leak' into the coolant. As you can see from the picture, the ports in the head are blocked with that yellowish crud.

While he was driving the truck and somehow being unable to see that it was overheating, the valve seat came loose and took a tour through the compression chamber and cylinder. The engine seized and the whole truck was kicked to the curb for good.

The missing seat is shown here, as well as the portion of the block that chipped away at the same time. I'm not sure if the seat was hardened or not. It was in about 60 little pieces embedded in various places.

I ended up finding a donor 226 engine, took it apart and the valve area looked pretty good to my untrained eye. I re-assembled it and hope to run it for a long time. I'll be interested in any suggestions on how to keep the valves in good shape should I decide to drive from Maine to Truckstock next year. Lots of highway to get there, and I have 4.86 gears.

Tom