My shop quoted me what I feel is a little high. How much is normal for a valve job, mill, and assembly for a set of BBC heads?
Thanks

What are you going to do, tell him what he can charge you to do your work? http://www.nastyz28.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif It isn't a crime for him to make a decent buck when you consider what the cost of all the equipment a machine shop has to have, and the decent wages he must pay to keep quality employees. You may find the higher prices equate to better machine work and information to you on how to set up your springs, etc. Machine work is not the place to save a buck, but that's just one man's opinion.

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A Canadian, EH? (with a 10 second street car)

Rust is right, $$ usually equals quality, but I'd look at his work to see. The prices I last paid 2 years ago in Virginia were:

Standard valve job-$70
Mill 2 heads-$40
Assembly-$30, plus any parts needed like seals, shims, etc.

What did he quote you??

I spent almost $300 a couple of years ago to have a set of cast iron BBC heads done at Syracuse Crank, Syracuse, NY. They did the following: clean the heads, magniflux the heads for cracks, check all the gasket surface areas for flatness (which were in specification so they didn't have to be milled which would have cost around $100 more), all the valve guides, put (8) hardened exhaust valve seats, three angle valve job, and set the spring heights.

Bottom line, just doing a valve job in not just renewing a set of heads. A good machine shop checks everything over so that you get a "like new" set of heads back with no cracks, to factory spec. gasket surfaces, guides that are to spec., valve seats to spec. (the hardened valve seats so that the heads don't erode with unleaded gas), and valve spring heights to their installed height.

I donno?

Why don't you ship everything off to CHINA and send $15 in the box!!

Bet you get a heck of a job back..

Hey, That's what I will do, make a shop in CHINA, do the job for $2.00/hr and then send the stuff back here and charge $75/hour labor rates!!

Make a f-----g fortune!!

pdq67

i agree with the above. also when putting guides in a bbc head,,,,the original guides don't have the hole machined right in the center of the guide. i machine for a .502 o.d. guide to be pressed into the original guide. i don't r&r or disturb the original guide unless absolutely necessary. it will cause the valve seat to be sunk cuz the original o.d. of the original guide isn't concentric with the i.d.. the replacement bbc guide will be more concentric and change the location of the seat to one side or the other, in where it puts the valve seat. it will sink the seat to clean up,, then the short side radius of the port will be shortened and the port flow will suffer because of it. a .502 guide will be much closer to concentric when machined into the original guide. if going to a bigger valve ,, then that will cover it up most of the time. although, if it's on the exaust side,, as said,, it will cut through the factory hardening and a machined hardend seat will still be necessary for decent street head life. my 2 cents.


[This message has been edited by 74RAT (edited July 30, 2005).]

Sound like to me again I got bad information from this site. These heads will cost close to almost the same as a set of Brand New World heads which will flow better anyways. I wish I would get this type of info before I buy something. When I was looking for heads earlier so many jumped to say rebuild some 049s or 781 they are great! They forgot to mention it cost just as much as it would cost to buy new one. Man this just sucks!

To get World heads cost $250 more than the head job on my low flow 79' 400 heads. No porting on either. full job on the 400 was $500 - $550. So fer $250 more I got the 2.02 high flow heads. Got the engine the other day, will swap out the 305 when it cools down 40 degres.....

<font face="Arial,Verdana" size="2">Originally posted by badazz81z28:
Sound like to me again I got bad information from this site. These heads will cost close to almost the same as a set of Brand New World heads which will flow better anyways. I wish I would get this type of info before I buy something. When I was looking for heads earlier so many jumped to say rebuild some 049s or 781 they are great! They forgot to mention it cost just as much as it would cost to buy new one. Man this just sucks!</font>

I got an estimate for 5 bills to do my 049's, no port work, just valve job, new larger valves and deck them .010. With those heads I wasn't happy with the low compression I would have had so I would have had to have the block machined for new pistons too, so I decided to go with Eddy heads. The weight savings was another reason to go with Al.