At 02:59 PM 6/27/02 -0600, David Councill wrote:
>Stellite exhaust valves - what are they exactly? They are almost twice the
>cost of a regular exhaust valve ....
They are hard coated stainless steel exhaust valves, and I mean VERY HARD
COATED (mince no words). Anyone who drives a lot of miles or runs an
engine hard should want these things, as they are worth every penny of the
price. If you believe me and that's all you wanted to know you can skip
the rest of this message.
I put a lot of miles on my MGA, lots of cruising in the fast lane on the
expressways, a moderate amount of very serious autocrossing, and more light
trailer towing than all other mileage combined. I used to wear out a set
of stainless steel exhaust valves every 40,000 miles or so until I started
using Stellite exhaust valves. Now I can run an engine 100,000 miles and
the valves are still in nice serviceable condition, even though the rest of
the engine may have taken a beating by that time. The combination of
hardened steel valve seats, Stellite exhaust valves and bronze valve guides
is a real winner (giving the bronze guides a skosh extra running
clearance). My last 100,000 mile cylinder head was transfered to another
newly rebuilt engine after only minor touch up of the land width on the
hardened steel exhaust seats. I have to date never managed to wear out a
Stellite exhaust valve, although I do prefer to install new ones when I do
a general engine rebuild after 100,000 to 125,000 miles.
"Deloro Stellite" is a manufacturing company with facilities in several
countries around the world. Larry Hoy just gave the web address. They
manufacture intricate castings, compressed powdered metal parts, and
machine parts. They supply materials and alloys to other
manufacturers. And the make machinery for hard facing, machining and laser
cutting. Most of their business is related to high temperature, high wear
and high corrosion applications. They sell and/or license hard coating
equipment to other manufacturing companies.
In context of that last sentence, "Stellite" is a company name (Deloro
Stellite), and a trade mark or trade name, and also a process name. The
name has become generic in the sense that people sometimes refer to any
hard coated part as a Stellite part, but I'm sure they still enforce their
trade name, so other manufacturers are not allowed to use the name
"Stellite" except under license agreement. Various hard coating equipment
that they manufacture and sell is refered to as Stellite coating
machinery. The parts treated with this equipment may be refered to as
Stellite parts (as in Stellite exhaust valves). A different company who
buys the Stellite equipment and uses it to manufacture hard coated exhaust
valves and also buys license to the name might legally call their parts
Stellite exhaust valves. As such these Stellite exhaust valves may or may
not be manufactured by Deloro Stellite, but you may trust that the hard
coating is pretty much the same wherever they orginate. You may trust the
name. It's a hard world.
Barney Gaylord
1958 MGA with an attitude
http://www.ntsource.com/~barneymg
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