Hi All
I feel like I should know this, but I just want to be sure. I sold a bare set of B heads to a guy and he wants used valves, springs and rockers to go with them. I'm thinking valves and rockers are the same, as long as the valve size is right. But I'm not sure if the springs are the same through the years/castings. Can I pull a set of springs off a set of J heads, or do I need to pull ones from the earlier heads that don't have rotators on them?

 

B heads = shallow spring pockets, he will need springs from A, B, C or CA heads.
Fairly sure the D castings were the first to use deep spring pockets.

 

The deep spring pockets have nothing to do with valve spring height. They were incorporated to make up for the height of the valve spring rotators in applications that used those. The springs were the same height.



The problem comes when people delete the rotators to save valvetrain weight. The deep pockets require spacers under the spring to make up for the rotator height to maintain the correct installed spring pressure. Alternately, if you DO have deep spring pockets, you can run taller than stock valve springs (by deleting the rotators) to allow more lift.

 

Thanks for the clarification Joe.
To add to the confusion, a lot of the vendors specify different spring
part numbers for different years/displacements.

 

Deep spring pockets started later than D heads. It was '71-72 for the small block heads IIRC.