I'll comment on this as a valvetrain engineer with some racing experience:

Valve spring temperature is driven by friction between inner and outer coils, or friction between the coils and spring dampers.

Testing at one of my former employers, a NASCAR team, revealed that the temperature of the oil introduced via the sprayers in the valve covers had little effect on the spring temperatures. The important thing was having oil present to carry the heat away.

My recommendation is that a marine application use beehive springs rather than dual springs. The speeds run on marine performance engines generally don't warrant a dual spring. Since beehive springs don't rely on friction for damping, they generate much less heat, and can free up some horsepower.

If anyone is interested in an engineering analysis of their valvegear, I'd be glad to talk about your particular application.

We test spring pressure on a bench at room temperature. What about when the spring is at 180 deg, 200, 240, 300, etc?

I have no idea how hot our actual valvesprings really get in a marine application, but , it would be interesting to see. I would imaging though, that spraying 240* oil on them for 15 minutes, vs spraying 180* oil on them, has to have some kind of effect on their temperatures. I cant see a spring running cooler than 240*, when your spraying 240 * oil on them.

300° spring temperatures aren't an issue. I should call Peterson Spring and ask what this chart is trying to claim. Maybe I'll learn something.

I think if you talk to Chris there, youll find hes a big fan of keeping ghe springs as cool as possible.

Ive never seen anyone running beehives on a bbc marine engine thats making any kind of serious power. Id imagine what if any power gain they offer, would be trumped by whether or not they can go the distance , keep things stable, etc. That being said, seems like conical springs have come a long way .

Cam guy at comp tried talking my buddy into conicals for his 502 builds that will be 6000rpm max. He asked my opinion, and all i had for him was "do you wanna go with whats been working for many years, or do you wanna try new things and see how they work out" . He went with some isky dual springs.

Damn won't let me edit above.

Oil cools the springs...it doesn't really heat them. So, the higher the oil temp the higher the spring temp.

Springs will glow red very quickly without any oil cooling them.

I think Peterson has a video on this too.

This is true with dual springs or springs with dampers. Single springs without dampers don't generate heat.

ooops. did not read your post top of the page. Only beehives used on OSO and most other sites are on some small blocks.....so I was assuming typical dual spring set up.

Springs lose Very little appreciable pressure due to heat , ( on the order of 1% or less ) . Springs generate large amounts of heat regardless of the design , the constant twisting of the metal generates the heat , ( think about twisting wire until it fails , it gets hot ) . Valvetrains generate a large amount of heat .

The analogy used here is not correct. When twisting a wire until failure, the wire is being plastically deformed. Plastic deformation creates heat. Valvesprings are deformed elastically, and elastic deformation is very efficient with nearly no energy lost as heat.

Some valvesprings have dampers or interference fit dual coils to damp surge energy. It's the two coils of wire rubbing against one another that creates heat, not the coils of wire themselves.

Beehive springs are designed to damp surge without the use of friction dampers, and have the benefit of using a much lighter retainer. That's why I prefer to use them when I can.

First off, thanks for posting as experts usually tire quickly of internet forums. There does seems to be a bit of evidence that the beehives in higher lift (ie Crane HR series) big block applications (heavy valve trains) were having a bit of a tough time. I believe it was Rayler who was finding this out first hand. Also when gathering parts for my project, the tech at PAC advised against going with the beehives in my application. It is easy to see that a beehive would have some inherent advantages or they wouldn't be so prolific in the OEM performance applications, but maybe for higher lift, BBC applications they may not be the best. Any comments?

I think the answer to this would depend on what you define as "higher lift". If we're talking about .600" and above, then we might have a discussion on our hands. If we're under .600" lift, then there are a number of options available to consider in a beehive design. What it would really come down to is what the stress levels are in the application.

Crane HR's typically use .610 to.632" lift with 1.7 rockers. Mild mid 220 at .050" to 242 at .050 durations.

Can't remember the last cam I put in a big block with less than .600

yea, been wondering why I haven't seen the behives move into the big block world. In my SBC in my 64 Vette I run short travel hydraulic rollers, 240's/575 lift with 1.6 rockers, behives with titanium retainers - right up to 7,000 rpm. Maybe that's their limit on lift? even though I'm not running the highest rate ones... Although the LS motor guys (cars) are running crazy high lift numbers with them I thought?

There's a lot of technology inertia in the performance aftermarket, I find. Once a certain solution is known to work, the development stops.

I've only seen a few beehive springs in marine big blocks. And they've all been broken in short time.

Tim, what did you end up running for your final oil cooler thermostat setup? Also what are your ambient lake temps and what are you running for oil pans?

I didn't care for the temps I saw with the stats, so I removed them.

i run engine to collect and back again like I always did, see average of 150 ish after cooler max of 220 ever after miles of WOT.
pans are 12 qt

no water stats I average 130 water temps

water right now is 60 ish degrees