A quick update on the Ford engine - the Orillia shop found a small crack in the block under one of the exhaust valve seats. They recommended United Welding Processes in Mississauga to repair this. So off I went. They repaired it using the Lock-N-Stitch process, which is a neat cast iron repair technique that's avoids welding. They also installed the 4 new seats I needed. But I found when I got it home, they had not machined the new seats.
My favourite local shop, Jim at Carquest on Bloor St, Oshawa, still had the tooling to grind the seats on these engines because he's old school and never gets rid of anything. He also found that the chuck on his valve grinding machine would open up enough to accommodate the large diameter mushroom tip on the flathead valves so he could grind the 45 degree face on the valves. I blued one seat when I got everything back from him and got perfect valve to seat contact.
Next hassle was getting valve clearances in spec, 0.010-0.012" for intake and 0.014-0.016" exhaust. There's no easy screwed adjustment like in more modern engines (unless you upgrade to adjustable lifters, which I wanted to avoid). The valve tip has to be ground. I spent most of the day today on this and got 12 valves done.
This has turned out to be a really interesting job.
Malcolm
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