Been working on that blue 59ab I brought home two weeks ago. Got good spark now and went through the carb after that. New head gaskets came in on Friday so this afternoon I pulled the intake and found some good news. Remarkably clean in the valve chamber and it has adjustable lifters and drilled lifter bosses. The ford rebuild tag shows bore at .0825 and .010/.010. Pistons are stamped accordingly. Sadly the stroke is 3 3/4"
but this was a pig in a poke situation at best. The valve clearances are quite big. I usually set them up in the middle of the range numbers in my orange ford overhaul book. I notice that the last variants of the V8 show .018 for exhaust valves. Is this because they used valve rotators? Does my engine appear to have rotators, and if so, do I need the big ,018 clearance on the exhaust valves? On a side note, you can see that on #4 the builder missed the groove in the valve guide with his horseshoe clip and set it between the spring and the guide. Maybe a good 1/8" added to the lash. Maybe this is why this otherwise good looking engine was pulled? There is plenty of cross hatch showing in the bores and cranking on 12 volts with no heads it shows 60 lb oil pressure on a mechanical gauge. I remain quite optomistic but want to set the valves tomorrow before I fire it up on the stand. I know nothing about the cam but expect stock. The adjuster bolts seem pretty deep in the bores though. Valve lash settings???? Thanks in advance GB