Ok fellas I got the heads for my 455 back last week and have been trying to find valve springs and retainers. I have seen lots of different crap but having a hard time getting started, I have 4 or 5 different retainers all having different heights, can't decide on the O.D., or beehive, conical, ovate, or just straight up regular springs. I am using a roller camshaft and aluminum full roller 1.6 rocker arms, cam is

.520 lift intake
.534 lift exhaust
214/220 degrees duration @ 50 thousands
110 cca

I can't seem to find the right spring rate with the dimensions I want and motor cam with all rotating retainers so need a set of those too.

I talked to a guy at Jegs to ask how I can measure to find what I need and he had no useful info (to put it extremely nice)

Is there anyone that knows their olds valve train extremely well??
Not sure where to start so any advice will be greatly appreciated!!

 

Your cam supplier should be able to help you. You'll need to give him your installed height etc.

 

Well with all the different retainers, all with different heights how will he know what I have? I don't know the install height and have about 4 retainers all having different heights, if I buy a set of retainers what will the height be?? I had a guy grind a roller cam from specs I copied of the net.

The install heights on the retainers I have (but not a full set of any) vary from 1.750 - 1.875, if I buy after market retainers do I just tell them " I need a set of retainers" and they send me what ever or like in jegs they have -0.015 - +0.015 retainers...I need a point of reference to measure by...apparently they have different height retainers so how do they measure, where are they measuring from, surely not the spring seat because they are not all the same

 

I know the pressures the springs need to be, but everything else is up in the air

 

Shoot for 1.800 installed height, you'll have a good choice of springs at that measurement. But one way or another you'll need to take the heads to him to check.

O.K. so let me get this straight, you gave a guy some cam specs and without a master lobe to work from he copied the specs, hmmmm... Unless he has a CNC machine I'd like to see that, I'd check that cam if I were you. Also I'm guessing he used an old 307 core? If so you might want to find out how much he had to grind off of that, you'll need to make sure he didn't go past the hardness.