My first suggestion for you is to get a copy of Tom Monroe's book "How to
Rebuild Your Small-block Ford. It's relatively cheap and has lots of
useful information on this engine, including the HiPo version. He has a
procedure for adjusting valves that only requires recantation to 3
points. Each
point allows adjusting 4 to 6 values.
I bought a set of the oil diverters, but have never used them. I got
lots of recommendations from other Ford owners with solid lifters in the
local Shelby
club to use an alternative method. I started with a fresh rebuild, so I
did an initial cold adjustment per the manual's recommended cold lash.
After driving
for a few hundred miles, I did a hot adjustment as follows- I drove the
car around until it was at the normal hot operating temperature, pulled
into the
garage, stopped the engine and rotated the crank to the first crank
position. I recommend making up a remote starter switched and having
your breaker
bar and socket ready to speed things up. I adjusted the first group of
valves for this point. Then I repeated the whole process the next two
points. That
is, I drove around to insure the temperature was up to normal, then
adjusted the next point's valves. I ended up repeating one of the steps
when I didn't
feel I had done the adjustments quickly enough. But usually it goes
pretty fast once you get the hang of it. Also, I didn't remove the valve
covers until I
had the crank at the desired adjustment points. In fact, I only removed
one cover at a time. One other thing is that I replaced the stock
adjusting nuts
with Poly-Locks which are a little easier to deal with. You can get a
special adjusting tool for them, tool. I repeated this hot procedure
after a few
thousand more break-in miles.
After completing the second hot adjustment, I let the car set until it
had completely cooled off, then checked the lash of each valve and noted
the value. Now
I have a set of hot equivalent cold values I can use for future
adjustments. Probably it would be a good idea to do a sanity check rerun
of this procedure
after a few adjustments. Or if you're kind of paranoid, maybe just
follow the hot procedure.
Roland
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