DIY valve job?

[JJMaine]

I've got my cylinder heads off as many of you know and have found that each head has 1 leaking intake and 1 leaking exhaust valve.

I'm wondering if it would work for me to just get some valve grinding compound and lap them in so they seal. I also have stem seals that came with my head gasket kit to install. Should I re-lap all the valves or only the ones that are leaking? Never lapped any valves but figure maybe I'd use this as a good way to learn. Worse case, when I bring the heads to the machine shop to get resurfaced I can have them do it.

 

[Uncle Gump]

Honestly...

Since you're that far... you just need to have them reconditioned.

Lapping valves is performed after the valves and seats are ground. It really does nothing to reface valves or seats.

It's likely that they will still leak after lapping.

 

[JJMaine]

Ok thanks, I thought maybe lapping them would do the trick.

 

[JJMaine]

Will the hot tank or vapor blasting at the machine shop hurt the cam bearing surfaces (are those called journals?). I'm worried about paying a machine shop to do a bunch more work and then the heads come back with bearing surfaces like these reman heads.

As you can see from this video it happened to this guy and others from my limited research.

Is it possible to clean them here and ask them not to clean them before they do the work? Not sure how machine shops operate, I've spent about 10 minutes at one now.

 

[Uncle Gump]

If they don't media blast them it should be fine. You don't want that in your oil passages. I would think some hot tank methods could be harmful also.

Just tell the guy what you found out and ask him about his cleaning procedures.