I pulled apart my heads this morning, and I had a couple of valve keepers that had fractured. Is this a common problem? What would cause this? The motor only had 30 hours on it.

Guess I'll be getting a new set.

Are you talking about retainers, locks or locator/cups? If its the locks , and they are 7*. Then yes its common, put 10* locks and retainers in.

Locks - yes, they are 7*. What makes the 10* better?

The angle. If you put both in your hand you can see the difference. 10* is stronger, most stock stuff comes with 7*.

Oh ya , you have to change both the locks and retainers

Yep, hate having to spend another $100 on keepers and retainers. This is a 5200 RPM motor max, .596 / .612 lift. Still need 10*?

7 degree super locks

$100 is a lot cheaper than a dropped valve. I have seen a couple of engines that were damaged because of broken keepers & it was not cheap to fix them. jmho. Randy

are you sure the 10 deg is better,i know a guy who assembled engines for hendrix motor sports for a long time,he told me they use 7 deg locks&retainers and they run at 7000+ rpm for 400 laps on the super speedways,im pretty sure they did a lot of r&d before they decided what works best for them,im not arguing ,just saying.

When building my sbcs I spent hours talking to comp, howards, lunati and crane. The general consensus is that unless you have a real radical cam and springs that are real high spring rate the 7's are all you need. In fact they all agree that the 7's do a better job locking to the valve stem. The main advantage to the 10's is the come apart easier at tear down time.