Topic: Do I Have any Legal Merit Against This Machine Shop?

[MRieck]

What is wrong with grinding the valves ?

Frank...I have personally seen ground 550 valves after several thousand miles and they are beat to $hit. My understanding is the faces are Stellite coated or something and grinding wipes that out. The one thing I know for sure is that metal is pretty soft after grinding and the face gets really beat up very quickly. Also...the margin is pretty thin (especially on the intakes)....grinding...even a small amount.... really thins them out. You have to replace valves.
 I have seen OK guides on the 550's as the lighter valves and generous support helps make them last. Still I replace about 90% of them. The new guide will make the valve job last longer as the valve is tighter in the guide bore.
 The shop should have vacuum tested the valve job after cutting the seats. The vacuum tester is part of any good (read Serdi etc) seat cutting tool.
 You can use loose guides and marginal/excessively lapped/ground  valves if you just want something that runs and you are not concerned about performance. That is the goal of many folks on this board. If you want some performance you need to start replacing parts.
 Sorry to hear about the problems....there are some crap shops out there.

[chewbacca5000]

I know I am a little late to the party, but here is what I did after my serdi valve job.

Got my head back held it up to the sun and saw a little day light coming through, and was a bit bummed like you.  Then I remembered reading Hondamans book and he talks about seat cutting, grinding lapping etc..

One thing that helped me was taking a little oil putting it on the valve face and with my finger working the valve into the seat.  Hondaman has a better more detailed explanation in his book.

After doing this I then held the head up to the sun and the little sliver of light was gone.  Hope this helps

[faux fiddy]

Seems like they shouldn't do what you tell them not to.
It may be tough to get any recourse but it  documentation is always helpful.

[754]

Mike thanks for clearing that up, that is why I asked what is wrong with grinding.
 Had a talk with a local builder and he had told me that Honda valves were different, said you could at most take only a slight bit of the stems but the hard part was very thin,,and I could not remember what he said about the grinding of the other end.
 I know if the valve was chucked perfectly, and a thou came off, and it cleaned up, it would still look like a lot was ground.
 The question I have now is can the MANLEY or others be ground?

[MRieck]

I have had stainless valves ground with no problems Frank. That includes the Manleys.

[Trad]

As Mike stated, the reason I didn't want the valves cut was for the Stellite coating the had from the factory. That, as well as the fact the margins are so small on these valves. Cutting valves from larger twins may not be a big deal.

Maybe that coating gets beat off in a few thousand miles, who really knows for sure. All I know is that for this build I wanted things to be perfect, and I didn't want to take any chances.

Since the incident the shop hasn't offered any compensation. I'm over it. The head is already back to me from a better with fresh valves and guide.