Titanium Valves In A Daily Driver

[Type 4 Unleashed]

The Del West valves have a lash cap which is a big no no IMHO.

If they are running lash caps on the LS7, then I would think that the stems don't have steel tips and they would have to have lash caps and the stem tips would have to coated to keep from galling with the steel lash cap.

Thanks for the tips on coatings, I do have a set of used 7mm stem intakes (Dyno Time Only), that are Casidium coated stem and valve face, but when I have the stem and head cut to size I will loose the steel tip and coating on both. But more than likely I will have to have them recoated with Casidium.

[qikbbstang]

You are going to re-invent the wheel by using used Ti Valves on a street engine and what about the fancy treatments coatings that you will cut through or that are already well worn off?................................................ We just swapped out a set of beryllium seats and Ti Valves on a Street Yates Headed Engine to SS to not deal with the risk we saw....................

[EngineTech1]

Actually small, Int's 1.89"-48mm & exh 1.60"-40.6mm, the Tit valve and retainer will provide about a 50g weight reduction compared to the steel ones on the int's, less for the exh..

That's a ridiculous amount of machining. That's almost .300 off the diameter of a typical cup intake valve. Also what about length? They are usually pretty long compared to anything I've ever seen from a 4 cyl.

What kind of engine is this?

[Type 4 Unleashed]

That's a ridiculous amount of machining. That's almost .300 off the diameter of a typical cup intake valve. Also what about length? They are usually pretty long compared to anything I've ever seen from a 4 cyl.

What kind of engine is this?

I can pull 7,000 rpm with a 30g retainer & 110g SS valve, with Howards drop in 1.250" SBC springs which have about 400#'s over the nose.

I now want to go up to at least 8,000 rpm, and drop spring pressure, and the only way I can do that is drop valve train weight. The used Tit valves are my least expensive option, machining and all.

I found my notes on this, the valve on the left was a 5/16 stem sample valve that I had the stem cut down, head dia. is 2.170", it weights 82 grams, 7mm stem valve on the right with a 2.170" head weights 74 grams, after the head is cut down .280" and stem is cut down .800", I estimate the weight could be around 50g's . So the weight reduction between the Tit valve and retainer and the SS valve and chromoly retainer could be as much as 75g's per int valve.

I have been researching the Beehive spring, which I believe will handle the rpm's I want with the weight reduction.

The motor will be a 2.9 ltr 914 Porsche Type lV motor, in other words it's a VW motor.

[Racedad]

Are the secret ingrediants in the coating you will need to apply to the seating area made up of Windex and your Mom's hand lotion?

[EngineTech1]

That sounds pretty interesting. Who do you plan to have shorten the stem and re cut the lock groove? Personally I'd be wary of trying to shorten and re cut the groove unless the manufacturer did it and didn't see a problem with it.

I am not as big of a proponent of the beehive springs in high rpm applications anymore. If you use them just make sure you get the best possible fit between the locks and the stem, and the locks and the retainer. They tend to spin fast and do weird things to the locks and retainers if they aren't perfect.

[Type 4 Unleashed]

This has been on the back burner up till about 3 months ago. Decided to do them to complete a light weight valve train project

As far as I have gotten.

Valves have been cut to size, Int guides were from SB2 cut to fit, the Exh guides were cut to size from blanks for an unknown app, Exh seats were for SB2, and the Int seats were BBC Brodix Exh seats. Spark plugs will be 10mm angled toward Exh valve, but kinda screwed up there, should of drilled them first.

Chamber design around the valves was ball milled, the rest by hand. Then got an offer from some one to write a CNC program for the chamber, but that will be for the next time.

I have been checking into coatings, DLC seems to be an option, so I will do the retainers, valve faces, keeper groves and valve tips, and I will have to run lash caps, the steel tips are gone.










All the valve faces and stems are cut to size, so final valve weights are : 48mm SS Int @ 108g down to 60g in Tit, a 48g loss, and 40mm SS Ext @ 94g down to 56g in Tit, down 38g.

Current retainers weigh 24g, new Tit retainers weigh 5g, 19g difference.

Since I've gone as lite as I could on the heads, I am going to keep going, and decided to use the case I have bushed for the 356 style lifters. Lifters weight 43g, the standard lifters I was going to use weigh 112g, so a weight loss of 69g.

Code: Select all

Int Valves           Exh Valves          Retainers            Lifters   

108 x 4 = 432        94 x 4 = 376        24 x 8 = 192         112 x 8 = 896
 60 x 4 =-240        56 x 4 =-224         5 x 8 = -40          43 x 8 =-344
        = 192g              = 152g              = 152g                = 552g

    192
    152
    152
    552
   =1048 g =  37.428 oz =  2.34 pds

So it works out to a total of 2.34 pds of weight loss in the valve train, and to me it seems to be a substantial amount.

[T]

Wow, Seem's you had an idea.... Look's like you can also find your way around a machine shop. I say you have gone this far, keep at it. Good luck !

[williamsmotowerx]

Ti needs a coating, on stem and valve seat area.

I don't think you can re-coat them if they're used.

What throat % do you have there? 80%?

[rskrause]

Sorry I can't offer anything informative. But WOW, you are persistent and that is an AMAZING amount of weight to take out of the valvetrain on a 4cyl. Very nice work!!!

Richard

[RW TECH]

What is the valve seat material? It can't be that expensive, after all you can buy a set of LS7 heads over the counter pretty affordably. That obviously doesn't mean the material is easily available though!

I've read that other production engines with Titanium valves are using very high tech hard coatings, on the titanium, to make them last.

I don't see any sign of these high tech coatings, being available on any titanium valves, from the typical racing aftermarket valve companies. They appear to assume that the only application is short term racing with Beryllium Copper valve seats?? Would Beryllium Copper valve seats hold up to any kind of serious mileage?

I haven't seen these unbotainum valve seats.... and i've had three sets of LS7 heads float thru the shop in the last month. (yep they are that light)

The LS7 stuff has a powder metal seat and guides and Ti valves from Del West. The Del West valves have a lash cap which is a big no no IMHO.

As for coatings the stock LS valves have a PVD coating on the heads of the valves. (My guess is a TiAlN)

You could use a variety of coatings depending on the hardness level you wanted. Titanium nitride is a good caoting for valves..... "(TiN) (sometimes known as Tinite) is an extremely hard (~85 Rockwell C Hardness or ~2500 Vickers Hardness or 24.5 gigapascals),[1] ceramic material, often used as a coating on titanium alloy, steel, carbide, and aluminum components to improve the substrate's surface properties." You see TiN on a lot of drill bits and end mills.

TiAlN, TiCN or CrN are also good choices, I've seen Cup valves with TiN on the heads and from what I hear wear is almost nil during a race.

Bret

Sure it's not CrN?

Either way street application Ti valves do need to be coated and I'm thinking there's some copper in the powdered metal seat alloy for the LS7.

[PackardV8]

Very nice work. If you find a quality shop which will hard-coat used valves, please let us all know on this thread. Every shop I have asked says used TI valves are too dirty. Their coatings are only guaranteed on new valves.

thnx, jack vines

[ap-engines]

Yep the Del West stuff if CrN. A good friend of mine is the Del West rep. I use the CrN coated valves on my sprint cars, they look good so far.

[williamsmotowerx]

A quick observation.. from the pics... looks like you cut down the guides in the ports.

That's a big no, no on Ti valve set-ups.. especially a endurance application.

Ti also like guide to seat concentricity, .001" or under... anything over .003" to .004" and "pop" goes the head.

[Type 4 Unleashed]

Thanks for all the support.

I'll try an cover everyone's questions.

Everyone is correct about coating over existing coatings. I did some calling on the coating issue and talked to quite a few places. But did not find exactly what I was looking for, and this was from watching the coating trend on the Nascar stuff, that I use for a reference, I figure I should be able to benefit from all the money they spend on R&D.

I did find a place that will do the coatings. The Int valve stems & faces were Casidium coated, but the coating on the valve face & tip was cut away.
The original stem length was around 5.900" and was cut to just under 5.0", and the faces were cut from 2.180" to 1.9" on the Int, the exh, just the stems were cut, the heads stayed at 1.580".

All that will be coated are just the freshly machined surfaces, valve seat face's, the keeper groves & tips, the rest will be masked off. The coating will be a DLC, the exh coating will be slightly different than the Int, to be able to handle the Exh temps. The company: http://www.richterprecision.com/

The machine work, I can do some minor stuff, but the valves, seats & guides are beyond my current ability, so I didn't do those.

As for the guides, the Int's are not pressed all the way in yet, and were only partially installed for room for port work and a guide to install the seats. The Exh have another issue, the valves were designed for a SB2 head and the distance from the taper on the stem to the guide was not an issue, but on my app the taper runs into the guide because the ports are so short, and the port and guide have been cut as much as possible, so now I will have to drill a clearance hole in the guide for the stem taper clearance. I knew this ahead of time from mock ups and was thinking at first just to get some SS 7mm stemmed blanks, but they would of been heavier, and this whole thing was about getting everything as lite as possible.

I know I am pushing the limits on this, but only to a point, I will be running about a third of the spring pressure that these would normally be ran at, and with the shorter stems they should have less leverage than a longer stem would and hopefully less wear.

I am waiting on some machine work, then finish the porting, then they go out to get the seats cut, then cc the chambers, then I will have one chamber flowed.