On my 70 145 restoration, I set the valves cold prior to starting and was quite surprised that all valve clearances were extremely tight. Much loosening was required to achieve 0.020" gap. Putted around for approximately 500 miles. Then checked valve gap hot today. All intake valves were virtually unchanged, but all exhaust valves had tightened up quite a bit ( maybe up to .005").

The manual says you can set valves hot or cold to the same clearance. This runs against my prior experience and intuition. Any thoughts on this?

Is it SOP to replace original valve seats on B18 heads? Possibly they were bronze or soft steel, and not up to non-leaded fuel service?

It looks like a valve job is in my near future, since compression has not much improved over initial test, all my applications of Marvel Oil notwithstanding. Comp test results did not noticeably change after adding oil to cylinders which points to valve trouble. #1= 55psi, #2= 155psi, #3= 155psi, #4= 130psi.

Maybe I'll pull the whole engine and have 'er worked over and balanced. Get steel gearset for cam and conver front and rear seal to modern lip-type seal instead of felt packing. I'll have to see if budget will allow all this.

Was nice to hear a good word for the ol' auto tranny. Especially with engine expenses looming, looks like I'll be counting on auto tranny for longer than originally planned.

Later,
:-)
Al