buck35

Effin , your effort is admirable, but having followed this with great interest, I have to think just maybe someone has basterdised this from original, ... maybe not , but if it can be done better. Why not?
And best of luck either way, it's a great project!

MILD THUNDER

iTrader: (3)

Mark, you have had a lot of good input on this thread. Input that some posters would long for. I think you need to calm down about these 482 engines. I totally understand you have a passion for them, your vintage boats, and the whole history part of things. I think its cool as well. But you are letting your emotions blindfold you from taking good advice, and quite possibly going to end up destructing one of these pieces to the point its going to end up in a scrap bin. Every time you post a thread about these engines, you come out swinging when anybody remotely inquires about them, insinuating "how dare you question a legend!!!!!!!!!".

No need to get angry and condescending. Or your remark about everyone on oso "stuck up". Maybe the rebuttles aren't what you want to hear, but they are the truth. Asking for help, then rebuttling with condescending insults, is the trend on oso lately, and some members might find that "stuck up".

As far as to why Crane recommends those springs, I'll venture to speculate on that, but without any real data on it,

30 years ago, companies were product and vendor limited. Same reason why someone would have to spend tons of man hours porting those cylinder heads to perform like they did, simply because good flowing BBC cylinder heads were not readily available. I do not know the motive, nor the history on what that particular cam was designed for. Offshore marine endurance engines were a rarity during that era. Nobody was looking at that profile, thinking, "boy, lets set this thing up for a long lasting valvetrain setup". My guess is, they were simply thinking "this cam/spring combo is gonna go into a drag race or engine class that is going to be tore down frequently". I'm sure spring suppliers were not as available as they are today, amongst many other things.

As rmbuilder pointed out earlier in the thread, that spring is more than required to control the valvetrain in that application. How does one know this today, and didn't back in 1980? Because simply today, we have wonderful things like the spintron machine, that allowed one to grasp a much closer look into what it takes to develop the PROPER valvetrain, and minimize the negatives from having either too much, or too little spring. Guys like Cark K, Smokey Yunick, and so many others from that era were undoubtedly truly talented innovators, not just engine builders. Their hands were tied however with the rest of the industry, as far as time of progression. The 1970 LS6 chevelle engine, while a great engine, is not exactly a modern LS7.

Technology is evolving daily, this is why today we can have an offshore marine engine that will make the same power as that 482 K motor, but last 5X as long, and simply do everything better. While it was a fantastic piece in its day, it is not to say it was without drawbacks, that can be improved upon today. Whether or not you want to indulge in that, is your call. Myself, if I was into that setup, I also wouldnt want to change much of the recipe, but running the proper spring/retainer/lock combo, is not somewhere I would disregard, history or not. Which turned out after all, to not be the handiwork of KAM, but yet someone else. That is of course if you plan to run the engine. If you are going to put it on a stand in your living room for a conversation piece, then by all means run whatever spring/lock/retainer combo you wish.

I would advise running the hardened shim providing the pocket is machined for the spring diameter you are using, or cup, or locator, with proper lock retainer combo to get your installed height, which was already stated by several members undoubtedly have the qualifications to offer this insight. Good luck.

buck35

Mild thunder .. this is one of, if not the best post i have ever read here . Thank you for that! And don't forget you're knowledge is appreciated by many of us .

f_inscreenname

Thunder I hear you. I not even sure how we got to this point. The question was, if you would put something under the spring or not. From there we have got off on rebuilding my whole head from a dark picture. Regardless if the cam is original to the motor or not. Who cares who picked it at this point. The bottom line is it’s a Crane cam in a crane box. Crane recommends that retainer, Crain recommends that spring, Crane recommends that lock. I found it was done decades ago when I documented the original motors breakdown and you can still google search the cam and find the same exact recommended part #’s to use today. Maybe they are wrong. I work out of my garage and not going to question the old Crane Company unless there is an issue which there is not.
The reason I said what I said about OSO is because again you all were not getting what I said a number of times. I was looking for a simple answer to a simple question. Even though I didn’t ask for it for some reason it seemed that some prefer to write paragraphs on what I am doing wrong by looking at a picture of a head half taken apart and how a great running motor is just a pile of mismatched parts (maybe they should apply to run Crane) and that it’s a ticking time bomb ready to explode and how stupid I was for not taking the great running motor apart and changing it all around on unsolicited advice from a message board over the people who made the cam. This is not the first time this board had more to say about what they thought was wrong then answer the question asked and it pisses me off that I get “if you don’t do it our way it’s not going to work” post after post and their cheer club and never get an answer to my simple question. I know this motor make no sense but it works. Once you all get past that I think we are good when it comes to this motor.

dereknkathy

you give anybody 40 years to redesign something that was amazing and they will improve on it. if you sent that motor back to Crane they would not do it the same way today. that cam is NLA for a reason...the people who designed it have redesigned it 5 or 10 times in the preceding 4 decades and it is now obsolete. in fact if a company insists on sticking with design work they did in 1970 and refuses to update their product they will not survive. these guys on here can't help themselves; they have to say "there is a much better way to do that." and they are usually right. that being said, you insist on Karl's 45 year old design work because this engine is the original version. play the kinks "you really got me". then listen to the van halen version. nowadays when the kinks do that song it sounds like the van halen version for 2 reasons. the rewrite IS an improvement on the original and the kinks have had 40 years practice since they wrote that song and are much better musicians today. but you wanna clone the original engine ask Bob M to clone that NLA camshaft. he won't like it cuz it can be done better, but i bet he would do it...he is certainly the only guy who could do it. edit; just reread whole thread and apparently you have the matching cam already. orig engine; are those the orig 45 year old valve springs? isn't it about time to scrap them anyway? especially the ones that have been compressed with the valves open in the warehouse forever...

dereknkathy

in fact what you are doing is trying to improve on the original. just putting a hardened shim under the valve springs is redesigning Karl's work. he didn't care about you or anybody else who was gonna open these engines up after 2 or 5 or 45 years and find them to be unrestorable. he built them to win races not live years. mike and haxby and bob m build engines to push boats very fast and live years. any one of them goes back in time to 1969 and walked in the front door of Crane WOULD be running the place in 6 months...

Unlimited jd

iTrader: (5)

Make sure it's a hardened shim that ends up under the spring. I had a handful of heads come in that didn't, and the springs wrecked the shims, chewed them up and left metal bits and shavings all over

dereknkathy

i went back and studied the 2 pics. i think everybody is right. those are 10 degree locks with 7 degree retainers. the locks only contact the retainers at one thin line on the lock where it touches the top of the retainer. the pic of the head, look at the shiny line around the lock leaning up against the valve cover stud. that is the only contact point with the retainers. unless they did that deliberately to lower installed spring height to increase closed valve spring pressure it HAS to be a mistake. and if they did it deliberately it was cuz they didn't care about longevity anyway. either way the retainer-lock combo really really really needs to be changed. because again they have been sitting under strain with spring tension on them for a LOOOONG time in valvetrain years. i don't think carl would be spinning in the grave cuz you updated the valvetrain. in fact i think he would hit you about the head repeatedly if you insisted on running 45 year old springs-locks, etc...

airjunky

iTrader: (2)

Carefully read through all 5 pages ,now its just killing me . I sure would like to know what kind of rpm they ran those original 482 spec motors up to .Did they keep it at 6200rpm? 700lb springs were twice the rating of the zl1 spring they were stout for the day

f_inscreenname

Again I would like to say I appreciated everyone’s help and opinions. I understand you all have an issue with the valve train of the original motor. I have to pull the valve covers to at least check lash and will look into it further when I pull the motor this spring. I also understand you all have an issue with what Crane recommends for their cam. Not sure what to say. If you have a part # I’m willing to take it and will consider it (they got to be cheaper $$).
Also thanks for those who did answer the original question and confirming my original though that there should be something between the head and spring.