Piston to valve clearance ??? Heads on short-block

TooSlo86

Club Member
Before I get too confident in my measurements, does anyone see anything wrong in this method of checking my ptv clearance without removing the heads?

What I've done is torn apart two hydraulic roller lifters and shimmed the internals to make them solid, tightened down the rockers onto various size feeler gauges until I made ptv contact as evidenced by the engine stopping (being turned by hand) then backed off on feeler gauge thickness until I could either JUST barely feel a catch or not at all. I'm coming up with .096" on the intake and gave up on the exhaust as I was pretty far over min. on that. From what I've read I'm looking for a min. of .080" intake and .100" on the exhaust.

Never dealt with a cam I was worried about enough to check with the heads still on the engine, till now on a stock shortblock with a large duration/low lift tight centerlined cam.

In addition, if you have any other ideas, I'll listen also, I've been told there is a "wax" of some type that won't injure the engine if you loose it but I would think the feeler gauge would be much easier and more accurate than trying to fetch a compressed wax piece out of a spark plug hole and still be able to mic it.

Thanks
 
Not an OTS (cam) and I'm pretty sure no one has used these specs before for a meager stocker. It's only got .480" lift and is probably closest to a TFS Stage 3 with a bit more duration on a 109 LSA. It's going into a stock explorer long block with P heads. It was spec'd to this engine and my set up to be a 1 year "compromise" that optimizes the 4000-6500 rpm range until I could get around to building the "real" engine.

Regardless, see any issues with the way I've checked clearances?
 
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