How to Measure and Set Up your Valve Springs for Best Performance. - Hot Rod Jay 

Thanks! I'm glad you found it helpful 👍🏼👍🏼

👍🏼👍🏼 Thanks!

Ooops, I Learn one Day...LMAO.... or not!

@@myconight hahaha

Jay knows his stuff for sure. We were working on a channel just for him to do deep engine tech stuff but we're both just too busy right now.

I'll let him know! Thanks 👍🏼👍🏼

Enjoy!! 👊🏼👊🏼

I'm glad it was helpful. Jay is a genius with that stuff.

Thanks!! 👍🏼👍🏼 Jay knows his stuff for sure. I can put a stock engine together but he knows all the performance stuff. He's built some amazing engines. Smart dude for sure.

Thanks for watching bud! I'm glad you found it helpful!!

Thanks man!! 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

I'm glad you found it helpful, bud 👍🏼 Jay has some serious knowledge for sure. If you would like any videos explaining different things from Hot Rod Jay, let me know and I'll see if we can make it happen. Jay's pretty busy so I can't promise, but we'll try 👊🏼👊🏼

I'm glad you found it helpful! Thanks for watching 👍🏻👍🏻

I'm glad you liked it 👍🏼👍🏼

Thanks! Preassembled unit are nice. Mine had machining chips in some of the oil passages, which wasn't ideal, so it's still good to take them apart and check them anyway 👍🏼

Thanks bud. Hopefully you learned something you didn't already know. 👍🏼👍🏼👊🏼👊🏼

I'm glad you found it helpful!! Jay really knows his stuff. Unfortunately many of the owners of the jobs he's done won't allow their competition builds to be filmed but he's done some really insane jobs. Howard's is good stuff.

I'm not the expert on long term potentials. This is from Jay: Yeah he has a valid point but there are many variables to consider. It is good to keep in mind the scale of what you are working with. It would be interesting to take yours apart after some time and see what kind of loss there is. I have checked heavy springs on aggressive setups and seen minimal loss.

That's good info. I have Jay explain the technical details because I'm just a general wrench. I don't have the in-depth performance knowledge that a lot of guys have. Just a grease monkey over here :)

From my experience ... Softer springs fatigue at a faster rate than firm springs within a reasonable spec. If the seat and open pressure, within a light duty parameter, are within 10%, the additional pressure will not reduce service life of the cam, lifters, or valvetrain, because the engineers build quality parts to perform for many miles within a variable "acceptable" range. That's why Edelbrock puts a "middle of the road spring" on their heads. In other words, springs fatigue over time/use, so a spring that is 5% over the cam card will degrade over time to actually "settle" into the "ideal" spec, while also not increasing pressure so much to the point where other components working collectively in actuating the valves (cam lobes, lifters, rockers, studs etc) will not see appreciable accelerated wear/fatigue. This has been my experience building a few Chevy and Ford small blocks over the years with rollers that went close to or over 100k, under regular performance street use. I've had a roller lifter fail prematurely before, but that was one lifter and the other 15 never did during the life of the build, so one bad part, not the norm, or a data point to be concerned about. An excessive amount of pressure will reduce the service life of other components, but you have to do so by intent or by buying the wrong parts for a particular build.

@@richdouche8253 Makes sense to me. I'll keep that in mind for the future. When Jay and I built the 360 I was trying to pinch a lot of pennies to get the best parts I could on a budget. I wasn't sure about the stock Edelbrock springs and valves but given the alternative to upgrade, and my pretty mild build, I tried to save a few bucks.

@@HFG Yeah, Jay seems like a great guy to have in your corner. I can tell he gets the engineering behind what he's doing, versus some "engine builders" just put combos together without consideration for what all is involved. More often than not I see builders putting the wrong cams in their builds. They work pretty good, but not optimized. For example, many think idle vacuum is achieved by increasing lobe separation angle versus reducing the overlap. So you see street/strip builds with 400ci engines running 112° LSA vs say a 106°. Which on a dyno the proper LSA will make more power everywhere, etc etc. Then adjusting overlap to get vacuum/idle quality, and moving the location of peak output. Anyhow... Those Edelbrock heads are usually just bolted on and ran, as Jay said in this video... Which they'll do just fine, but what he went through testing will produce a better result for longevity of the valvetrain and valve seats. Good guy!

Thanks 👍🏼 They're pretty good right out of the box. I don't know if it's that video or another one, but check the oil passages and other holes for burs and metal fragments. Mine had some drill chips in a few places. As long as your cam isn't too extreme, the stock springs should be fine. Beyond what you saw in the video, maybe a gasket match and they should fine fine out of the box. In my case there weren't many decent options, so they're worth the money. They're good heads

So what would you do if you were doing a build, using the same cam, but you've decked your block, decked/ ported/ valve jobbed your heads? You wouldn't be able to just use an off the shelf set of springs right?

I think you're referring to the Valve Spring Tester. Looks like a little arbor press? It's just called a valve spring tester. You can find those at any of the parts suppliers. Summit, Jegs etc. You can even buy some that can check springs while still installed in the engine 👍🏼👍🏼

Thanks! I don't currently have any Ford 302 heads. If I mentioned 302's in this video it was referring to small block Chrysler swirl port heads with the last 3 casting numbers being 302. For 302 heads should be pretty easy to track down, though.

👊🏼👊🏼

I'm in the process of building a mod motor (5.4 3v). Is all the processes the same with a overhead cam ? I want to build the motor myself but I'm not sure I understand everything well enough to do this. I have aluminum heads, so do I need spring cups? Its a small .500 lift cam. Thos still my daily driver. No racing....lol

Spring pressure is spring pressure, although I don't know enough about those engines to say what you need. If it's a daily then you're probably safe using the factory setup, but you might want to call someone who actually builds those engines, or buy heads that are already assembled. 👍🏼

TY for all of your valuable knowledge, I've watched this video 3 times and I keep learning more each time 👍

Thanks. The credit goes to my buddy Jay, and I'll tell him you said so 👍🏼👍🏼

A spintron would be pretty fun to play with. You're definitely right about out of the box parts. Always check 👍🏼

Iron heads will not necessarily require locators. I do however recommend that if more than two shims are used, keep the thicker of the shims towards the valve spring(thinner shims towards the head spring surface). - Hot Rod Jay

👍🏼👍🏼 I don't build many "performance" engines, so I'm happily learning. Too expensive for me :)

The cam I got was spec'd for a 1.5 rocker. Other cams have the rocker ratio that they're spec'd for printed on the card. Once someone builds the head/engine they'll go back and double check that everything is in spec. You wouldn't want to miss something and have a valve contact a piston. Also they remeasure to make sure the parts they ordered are what they actually got. 👍🏼

@@HFGThanks!

@@jjay718 I have another video from Jay that shows you how to degree a cam. That goes hand in hand with the valvetrain video.

@@HFG good stuff! Makes me want to build a new motor. I want to get one of those valve spring checkers.

​@jjay718 those testers can get pretty expensive. But, if you want to really get deep into all of that then they're good to have. Mostly it's just validation stuff. Lots of people just bolt stuff on and never check it.

It's best to call your cam manufacturer and ask them what they recommend for your specific engine combo. They'll have the best info for you.

CC'ing just means finding the volume of the heads combustion chamber and the area above the piston (if you don't have a zero deck setup). Then you can establish what your compression will be. As for the history... I'm not sure. I've never heard it measured any other way other than CC's. All of the books I've read (even from manufacturers back in the 90's) we're all in cc's.

@@HFG Saying you're CC'ing is like saying you're inching something when I want to measure its length. That's really weird. I guess I have a few things to learn about cylinder head business.

@@tonyb1968 yup. Kinda weird for sure. It might have originally been called something else in imperial units in the past but I've never heard of it. If you find out the origins, let me know. 👍🏼👍🏼

That would affect the lift. You *could* change the shim stack depending on what you are aiming for. You'd want more pressure with a 1.6 than I have because the acceleration rate would be more aggressive. Each builder might have their own opinion on what they like. Your question doesn't really have an exact answer. There are more variabbles to consider because each application is different.

That comment was paraphrased from Jay. He is the master, I'm just trying to be a good student of his knowledge. I'm hoping sometime he has time to comment on stuff himself. Although his answer would be a book :)

I think that one is an old Hawkins compressor. There are quite a few that are similar, and most of them work pretty well as long as you get a good one. Some of the cheap ones flex and the really cheap ones are just flat out dangerous. 👍🏼 Thanks for watching!!

I'm not sure what you mean. We took the spring off to validate that each spring has the correct rate. In case of a defect or whatever. The shims under the springs adjust for any irregularities. This is all validation. If, for instance, you had a old engine with worn valve seats at different depths (to a point), adjustments would need to be made to the shims to get each spring to have the same value +-

If you have some mismatched springs on your engine for some reason then I guess you'd have to get creative if you couldn't get a matched set. It's measured from the top of your shims to the bottom of retainer. We'd add or remove shims depending on if there was discrepancy between the different spring pressures at whatever lift. Installed height is measure with the springs installed in the closed position. I'm sure there are some tricks other people use, or racers or whatever, but this is just basic checks. I think Jay said there was some kind of tool to check them while they're installed in the head but to be honest, I'm not anywhere near an authority on that stuff.

I had to ask Hot Rod Jay about it since, if I'm being honest, he's the brain behind the performance stuff. Here's his response: "The guy is exactly right. I had to watch the whole video and write down all the numbers so I could keep track of everything and make sense of it. In the calculation that he is referring to I added .038" to the installed height of 1.910 when I should have added a 083". The .083" dimension was for the height of the retainer. Looks like one of them dyslexic moments. The guy must really be watching and understanding to catch that little slip up." Great catch!! I'm pretty good at building stock stuff, but I try to learn as much as I can from Jay. 👍🏼👍🏼

Yeah I caught that too. I learned a lot from this explanation! Thank you, Mike

Thanks brother. It should be pretty snappy. It's amazing that I've spent so much money and effort on the 360LA to get about 450hp and the LS's are basically doing that with just a tune and a cam lol

@@HFG but are they really though I know a guy with a cammed and tuned full Bolton 6.0 an it only puts 330 to the tire guy he bought it from said it made 500 at the tire

@@CCAutoWorks True. Maybe those numbers aren't accurate. At least I know this 360 is a legit built engine. At the end of the day I might not reach 450 either. Maybe like 375 wheel. It's hard to say.

@@HFG that's respectable in my book

@@CCAutoWorks mine too. I don't plan on racing it.

Validation for consistency. These heads were brand new so they were all in good shape, but if you did a valve job on an older set of heads your seats might not be all at the same height, which would give you different spring pressures across the head. That's why they sell different thickness shims.

@@HFG I see …

@@slowazbmwkilla3073 it's also a good way to make sure the springs you get are the correct spec. Most people never do this step on a basic build, but Jay wanted to show how you could check them if you wanted to.

Sorry about that. I'll try to get a tighter focus next time.

It's a complicated thing. Hotrod Jay knows what he's talking about but I don't fully understand it either.