Best race valve material

[blwilliams]

As of late I have been having way more valve failure than anyone deserves.
When I first started racing many years ago the only race valve on the market were Manleys.
I used them with great success and only had one failure.
Now days there are many different valve companies offering race valves for sale.
SI, PBM Erson, REV, Ferrea, Manley and many many more.
All of the brand are touted to be as good as all others.
The price per valve varies quite a bit from one manufacturer to the other.
Are there that many different types of SS material?
Which type of material is the best, how can one find which is which?
Phone calls to front office sales people will only get you there a SS material.

Same questions can go for Ti valves as well.

[ProPower engines]

What it comes down to is choosing the right valve for the job.
The better quality valves have +/-.0002" runout in the stems making a honed guide job last 10000 times longer then a reamed guide when clearances are in the .0008 to .0012 range for race stuff.
Manley has the best I have seen for stainless Ferria 2nd and well the rest don't stack up IMO.
Delwest for Ti valves.
There are others but at that level of engine of RPM using ti valves is it worth the risk for unknown' valve quality

[Ollies930]

If you are looking for the highest quality valves out there, go to Victory1 Valves. There is no one out there that can surpass them. And you can talk to someone other than the front desk secretary about your needs.

[bentvalves]

what type of failures are occurring ?

[dannobee]

Yes, there are different types of stainless. I think most of us have been down that road with failing valves. Mine came when nascar lowered the compression in some of our cars from 12:1 to 9:1, and a rash of exhaust valve failures resulted. Ti just didn't cut it anymore and we ended up with Inconel. Failures stopped.
But depending on your failures, the first line of defense is to review your valve seat width. Wider will help the valve shed its heat back into the head, where the cooling system can do its job. And I know lots of machinists like to run the guide clearance under 0.001", but the risk under sustained high rpm power is that the valve heats up enough to stick in the guide, then the piston hits the valve.

What failures are you experiencing? Once we know, I'm sure we'll all chime in with more advice.

[blwilliams]

Valve failure is the head snaps off.
Both valves as well as the combustion chamber are destroyed. I have no way to determine which broke first.
Intake valve is a Ti made by Victory and the exhaust came from PBM Erson.
This particular engine has less than 75 runs since all was brand new except engine block.
There is no signs of valve to piston issues on any of the undamaged pistons. Intake clearance was in the .140" range and exhaust was .160".
Valve size is 2.350 and 1.85
Not sure on how to post up a picture but they are not pretty.

[dannobee]

Are you certain that it isn't a valve spring issue? If they're weak, they'll cause the valve to slam back down onto the seat.

Check installed height, check for recommended pressures, compare to new springs, compare from your notes or buy an identical one. Are the springs the same that are recommended by the cam grinder?

[blwilliams]

I have not had a chance to check valve springs yet.
Cam is a special grind from Scoggin Dickey ground by Comp.
Lift on the intake is .887 and .856 on the exhaust.
I will be calling Alan at SD tomorrow to see if I can get anymore insight as to possible cause of failure.

I have not had that much experience with Ti valves but everything I read is that Ti is stronger than SS per weight of material.
With that in mind I believe a SS valve will be slightly stronger than a Ti valve of comparable size.
It is my thoughts that the Nascar engines run 500 miles at 8K RPM + and live so I should be able to have a greater life in a drag engine that is under 8K RPM.

[WeingartnerRacing]

The best stainless valves in my opinion are Ferrea Comp plus. For titanium victory.

[n2omike]

Cam is a special grind from Scoggin Dickey ground by Comp.
Lift on the intake is .887 and .856 on the exhaust.

With THAT much lift, you are WAY into Titanium territory. Would be very difficult to control a heavy stainless 2.35" valve with that much lift at very much rpm at all. If you are TRYING... that's probably why you are having so many failures.

[blwilliams]

N2O Mike they are Victory Ti intake valves. The exhaust were from PBM Erson.
The heads that Scoggin Dickey sells with their crate 582 are the Brodix head hunters equipped with SS valves. Same cam, same everything that I can see.
Those SS valves appear to have great life cycles.

[engineguyBill]

Valve failure is the head snaps off.

When the valve head breaks off the stem, the problem is typically the result of non-concentric valve face to seat contact area. Check your valve job very carefully for full and exact concentricity. When the seat and valve face are not exactly concentric it puts excessive force on the valve head and the head will snap off, similar to a wire breaking after being bent back and forth many times.

[cgarb]

PBM/Erson has two different series of valves. The race series and the competition series. The competition series is the better valves. I have seen a failure with the race valves, but it was an engine that had a ton of passes and the valves should have been cycled out years before. I have never seen a failure with the competition valves in my roller cam small blocks. I did switch to running the Enginepro brand black nitride valves recently, just to try something new. They seemed to be a couple grams lighter than what I took out.

[Paul Kane]

Valve failure is the head snaps off.

When the valve head breaks off the stem, the problem is typically the result of non-concentric valve face to seat contact area. Check your valve job very carefully for full and exact concentricity. When the seat and valve face are not exactly concentric it puts excessive force on the valve head and the head will snap off, similar to a wire breaking after being bent back and forth many times.

I was going to post the same as above and also wish to add that when using commercial-grade stainless valves such as the PBM’s—especially at upper rpm ranges—it’s wise to check and reface them for concentricity’s sake right out of the packaging and prior to install. If you haven’t ever done this then you’d be surprised how far out such new components can be.

When it comes to stainless steel valves I’ve had no issues with the BBB valves who are the private label manufacturer for several of the more popular brand valves.

[ProPower engines]

Valve failure is the head snaps off.

When the valve head breaks off the stem, the problem is typically the result of non-concentric valve face to seat contact area. Check your valve job very carefully for full and exact concentricity. When the seat and valve face are not exactly concentric it puts excessive force on the valve head and the head will snap off, similar to a wire breaking after being bent back and forth many times.

X2
The concentricity of the valve face to stem center line to valve guide to vale seat must be dead on.
I have seen many valve failures and from some of the very best and highest quality valve manufactures when used in heads that had less then optimum concentricity in the valve job.

Its an area that a great many shops today just over look as too much work and believe the valve stems are straight and the heads centered to the stems. Just because you have new parts to start with don't mean they were machined correctly.
And these same shops do not do tight tolerance guide work.

When you start honing guides you soon find out those quality entry level valves stems are far from straight and the faces are far from concentric. For that matter even the best valves made can be off at times but if its not checked well its
only a matter of time before something goes wrong.

A combination of big lift and spring pressures combined with non concentric valve/seat will cause the valve to try to slam shut sideways causing stress on the stem till the head falls off and after that its just a PITA to figure out what happened when if was thought everything was done right with good parts.