I got my replacement motor yesterday and took out the head to look for the bent valves it had. The motor was cranked with cam timing a tooth off of one of its cam gears

I pour solvent (I used fuel injector cleaner) into the cylinder head bowls and wait patiently for the solvent to flow thru the valves and into their respective ports.

I quickly determined the badly bent valve since the solvent flowed thru in less than 30 minutes in that port. I took the valve out and lo and behold it was visibly bent.

I left the remaining bowls overnight with the solvent. This morning I found solvent flowed thru most of the ports, but there was still a good amount of solvent on the bowls. They have slow leaks if you will. I took a valve out and could not see a bend...could be bent but not visible...then again it may not be.Does this mean that those are bent valves or perhaps a case of poor valve seating?

The motor was allegedly leak down tested and compression tested...they told me only around 3 valves needed to be replaced. But my ghetto test seems to prove otherwise.

I am getting the head a set of new valves and a valve job either way, but I am curious how accurate this method of testing will be in case I have to do it again in the future.

 

i use this method everytime i have to check for bent vavles. i think it works well. i personally use rubbing alcohol. its way cheaper than break cleaner....peace!

 

well its a decent method, but its always easy/cheap to pull all the valves and put new seals and keepers in for good measure.

 

thats a damn good idea....I never thought or heard of doing that to check for bent valves. I'm really happy you posted this because I was off a tooth myself when I installed my head after I got a p&p done. Well, it turns out, before I got the P&P done, my compression across the board was, 250,250,245,250 ....now its 220,195,220,250.....I did an oil test to see if the rings could be bad, and the numbers only cam up by like 10 psi....so I'm positive it's not the rings. I was thinkin its the valves...dammit! but I got a new valvetrain sitting here waiting to be installed.

Awesome post!

 

thanks...but this method has been around for some time already. some guys like to use different solvents though...

hope you get your motor back to spec soon!