Legion

I've never encountered this before, but some of my friends are telling me that it's common. I was dismantling a cylinder head and on every single intake valve, the keepers/retainers/valve stems were stuck together and had to be tapped with a hammer to come apart.

It seems that the reason for this was that the keepers had slightly embedded themselves into the valve stems. Once I removed the keepers, the stems were left with a very slight ridge that kept them from smoothly being pulled out through the guides. I had to de-bur the stems with some 600 grit sandpaper before sliding them through the guides.

Is this normal?

Here are the valvetrain components, if that matters. I was actually surprised that the valves are what distorted, seeing as they are hardened stainless steel and the keepers are OEM steel.

-Zex street/strip cam
-Skunk2 springs/retainers
-Stainless valves
-OEM keepers

alpha

I have had it happen a couple times when using aftermarket valves with oem keepers