As I don't own a set I can't comment on their machining, but worrying about the rocker being centered over the valve tip is not going to cause valve guide wear like you think. You will get wear from a wider sweep from the rocker arm on a centered valve. On my Dart heads when setting up pushrod length I found the mid lift point of my rockers has the intake rocker sitting very far towards the exhaust side of the valve. But I also only have .024" sweep. Centering the pattern results in a nearly .095" sweep. My heads have lash caps so there is plenty of real estate for the rocker to push on so I am sending it. My other alternative would have been to buy backset rocker arms to correct the rocker tip placement, but for me I feel it is going to be a non issue.

I took his description to mean that the rocker studs were not on plane with the guides and the result would have been that the rollers would not sit perpendicular to the valve stem.

At what point, were you like, wait, the guides are off, the seats are off, on brand new heads, and still decide to move forward with them?

Milled the rocker stud pads? Did they also redrill and retap the rocker stud bosses ?

Not sure if you read the whole thread, but mine were completely gone thru, machined and assembled by a cylinder head shop that has done cylinder heads, amd only cylinder heads, for almost 3 decades. He has seen them all, dart, afr, brodix, gm, edelbrock, pro topline, trick flow, etc. He found nothing horrible about the few sets of eq heads hes done. They were chamber ported, new valve jobs, and so on. He is very anal, but he is also very honest. If they were crap, he would have spoke up about it. He had zero interest in whether or not they were good or bad, i didnt buy them from him. If anything, it would be in his best financial interest, to sell me on replacing guides, seats, and machining.

Upon assembly, i checked several valves while mocking up pushrod lengths, and recording sweep patterns on the valve stems. I found no eveidence of the rollers not sitting flush on the valves, even with checking springs.

Quite a few big name cylinder head guys are using this casting, and have cnc programs for them , and running them on some high dollar truck pull engines. It certainly sounds like you have had some issues though. Engine quest did chime in earlier in this thread, it be interesting to hear their take on the issues you had .

Which head is Vintage referring to? We have not received a call on this issue and would like to discuss ANY QC issue that you may have run into. Typically it would be best to call my line directly and we can go over your alignment issue. Is this a 502 he is talking about?

He is talking about the CH454A i believe, the 320cc version

Avoided you? If the heads came from this office there certainly would never be anyone avoiding you. My direct line to my desk is 800-426-8771 ext 209. Curious who you spoke with at our company.

I've never touched an engine quest head. The poster on the previous page indicated he had a problem.

understood. i found his post.

This guy, Post #180

time to man up and call them. Ive had a set gone thru and assembled by a cylinder head only shop and these guys were very happy with the quality. No issues with rocker geometry either.

Post some pix of your problems