Measuring valve spring Height SBC.... Anyone have the tool to rent ?

[awsomeears]

I should have listened to the little guy on my shoulder when ordering my cam kit, recently broke in my Cam on my Nova with single springs, today I'm removing all of them and adding the dual spring. Now these springs were already on my Aluminum Edelbrok heads but after installing them setting my hydraulic preload and rotating I just have a bad feeling these springs are way too much

Long story short the Cost of Howards street/strip Single springs with dampers are $60 freaking bucks for all 16, hands down worth it...

I will call Howards tomorrow and ask them what spring do they recommend, for whatever reason my cam card is left BLANK :durr

I do have general numbers from my current springs :
Spring OD is 1.5
Retainer to valve seal .664 ( so my .480 lift cam is fine for this check )

and I did attempt to use the depth of my micrometer to bottom of retainer and got 1.875 but that is NOT with the recommended tool.

So does anyone have that tool for a SBC ?

Thanks again !!!



Update few hours later, got the brain working

So I took measurements on 4 valves, 2 intake and 2 exhaust with my depth micrometer I got 1.880 and 1.887 and there all within each other. I even cut down a piece of stock to these lengths and checked.

So Summit sells kits that have 50 shims, 16 sets of the 3 common sizes, my question is what height of spring is my general number based off of, the shortest of the Height I just measured or Tallest.

I would Guess shortest because I will then SHIM UP, you can't shim down duhhh :-)

Once I talk to Howards with all my info it should all come together

[95 TA - The Beast]

Yeah, I have one... As long as it is where I am expecting it to be... I am pretty sure I didn't borrow it out already...

It is a spring height micrometer. Honestly, if you put the retainer on with locks and measure off the spring seat to the retainer seat, it is the same thing. Just make sure you pull up on the retainer while doing it, or do it with a spring still in... close is good enough for that measurement...

You really need the height mic to setup the shims necessary to equalize the spring installed height. For figuring out what you need to order a standard mic measuring the height is close enough...

[awsomeears]

Hmmm you know you make think here, I'm going to head in the garage and I have random slugs of metal and what not. I could easily get it close and use a feeler gauge, the tool were speaking of is close to .001 but shims are sold in .05

OK reading more into this I hope I didn't screw myself, I now understand all valves are not perfectly level from each and every other and valve shims are used to get them where they should be all level. So this TOOL were talking about gets the nitty gritty small thousandths numbers from valve to valve