I used to say,,I work 100hrs on the boat for every hour running it.for the last dozen or so years,,I've beaten the average,,thank god.I built sane,reliable power and try not to beat on it too badly.

I often wonder if a Sea Ray is the way to go..... and then I am like.... NOPE!! I ride I=on dads and stab my eyes out lol

Sometimes deep pocket dudes aren't what they may seem. That was probably a good day day for someone. Little slit in the inlet hose after sunset and whalaa.

lol I said might be a great day for him. You never know. Insurance pays way to much for people's mistakes. And they come out smelling like a rose.

If this whole thing is in fact valve train instability, wonder if dual Conical (not beehive) springs would work. Doing some quick digging thru PAC (racingsprings.com), I found only a few choices for BBC and the one's I found say "drag race only" whereas their are many now for the SBC. Anyone know of any BBC ones marked for endurance (thru any company) and any know of any results ?

Edit in: this is for general discussion, not pointing at what FF should or should not do in this exact subect.

My thing is , if a spring that has what like 450lbs over the nose, heavy wall 3/8 pushrods, and top of the line lifters, cant control a hydraulic roller turning 5500rpm, your cam choice should be rethought.

This is why the dual conical valve springs. For the new generation of camshafts, more agressive and/or higher ratio rockers, etc,etc.

Again, what I stated above is not for FF to do, I am bringing it up for a general discussion. Not much info on it's use for BBC's at this time that I could find doing quick search. Starting to be really used for the SBC's now though. I'm sure this will infiltrate BBC's soon (already in drag race but not endurance that, again, I could find doing quick search) and will be really cool to see what happens.

ICU lookin was on the phone with the tech guys at comp when ordering his custom cams. They got into the valvespring topic, and suposedly they have done quite a bit of bbc endurance testing with conical springs, and the results were very good.

Hes putting together a mild 502 with a mild cam. While i do like the new technology, i felt safer advising him to stick with a proven dual spring with damper combo. We decided on an isky spring, properly matched components to go along with them, after measuring and considering the factors. Like installed height, coil bind clearance, retainer to spring fitment clearance, etc. The install heights on the engine quest iron heads out if the box are within .005 for the most part across the board out of 32 valves. Pretty good for a "budget" head.

I know on my engines, and icdedppls engines, they have seen plenty of 6000rpm time, and cams look fine, lifters look fine, valve seats look fine. On the dyno, they have quite a few pulls to 6500rpm. Thats with 2.30 intake, and heavy ferrea super alloy ex valves.

The conical springs are interesting though for sure.

On the subject of retainers, every time i freshened my 540 the ti retainers had damage from dampners or inner springd cutting into them and i changed them, last time i freshened it i went with the ulra light hd steel alloy versions. Luckily the metal it shed never made it past the filter and ate up the bearings or crank but i did NOT want to open it up to refreshen and find where metal did eat something up, my local machinist told me i was a idiot to ever run ti retainers with ANY double spring with a dampner against a ti retainer as it ALWAYS cuts them and if ran long enough i would have a retainer self destruct and we all know what happens when you drop a valve, fwiw, Smitty

A lot of that has to do with how the spring sits on the retainer. Different brand springs sit differently on different brand retainers. We run titanium retainers for 100's of hours and don't have those issues.