Hello I am refreshing the valve train up on my wifes 86 FI F150 with the 302 in it. I have some questions that I would really appreciate help with! This project has included the following parts so far:

CompCams 31-255-5 (recomended by the Comp Cams tech)
and the following recommended accessories also from Comp:

3120 True roller timing chain set at 0 degrees

7831 pushrods I am wondering these are 6.875 length the stock were 6.90 does this matter? The deck on the heads were milled .030 will this help compensate for a shorter rod?

832 Lifters

and the 942 springs. The springs lead me to my main question. I had the heads built by Fowler Engines in Columbus, who i hear is very reputable, speciallizing in blown alcohol engines. Anyway they called me to let me know the spring seat pressure was at 135lbs on the exhaust with a 1.725installed height. They had a set of used retainers they said would help and let me knve them for free. They appear to be in better shape than my old ones. With the keepers they took th seat pressure down to 110 lbs. Does anyone know if this is apprpriate seat pressure. The intakes are at 1.750 105 lbs. My final question is they gave me a box with my old retainers and also the spring damper. Is it okay to run without the damper? I can not find exactly what they do for the spring, I imagine it woud be to make it stiffer?

 

Here's some info I got from "How to rebuild your small block Ford".

If you milled the heads .030, then the intake needs .0212 removed from the bottom, and .015 from each side of the intake. In the book he recommends not milling over .010 off the heads, since you will raise the compression ratio a lot. If you have planned for this, then you should be ok. You may have to run higher octane fuel.

He has a chart in the book, and the latest 302 he lists is a 1978. In this case, installed the valve spring load is 76-84 lbs, with a minimum of 69 lbs. Installed height spec is 1.69(exhaust) and 1.60 inches(intake).

When the valve is open, these pressures are 190-210 lbs, with a minimum of 171 lbs. Open height is 1.31(exhaust) and 1.20(intake).

The highest spring pressure they list was for a Boss 302, and it had a max closed of 96 lbs, and a max open pressure of 331 lbs.

As far as the pushrods are concerned, you can see if the rods you have are going to work during the assembly process. When you install the pushrod and then the rocker assembly, wiggle the pushrod around while tightening the rocker bolt, till the slack is taken out of the pushrod. Then count the number of turns it takes to bottom out the bolt. If you are in the range of .8 to 1.75 turns, you are ok, and are pushing the lifter down in the ballpark operating range. If you are out of this range, you will have to get longer or shorter pushrods to make it work and to prevent tapping and noise.