B16A Head - Budget Gourmet Part 2

With the valve job complete, Mike threw the head in the resurfacer to make sure there was a perfectly smooth, flat surface to mate with the deck.

Before the valves, springs, and retainers go in, the spring shims and valve seals are put into place.

With the valves in, the springs, keepers and retainers are set loosely in place.

Every head builder on the planet will tell you that he invented this tool. Mike is the first one I've ever met that admitted it wasn't him. I won't tell you who it was, though; that way you can still believe it was your guy.

This part is easy to mess up. There are a whole lot of parts in a rocker assembly, and it's easy to misplace something. If one of these parts is missing, the whole thing won't go together.

Using a cut up rocker shaft to hold each set of rockers together, Mike feeds the rockershaft through the head. Genius.

There are many plugs that need to be re-installed before using the head.

Forget any one of these and you'll get good lessons in attention to detail and engine fluid cleanup.

Since we're not putting the head directly on the block, Mike thought it was best we didn't install the cams.

Had we installed the cams we'd have to store it with some of the valves sticking out of the combustion chamber (not a good idea).