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build diary April 12, 2007: I was driving to work yesterday and I was a bit ahead of schedule. They had good things to say! Joe - the machinist - figured there was a good chance he could get it out. I left the head and went on to work. A couple of hours later, I got a phone call saying the lifter was out and that nothing was damaged other than the lifter and the valve. No worries there, they're littering the place. While installing my new springs, he also found that all my other lifters were showing really odd wear patterns from constant valve float. So he replaced all of them with the set I had pulled aside for the Targa Miata head. As I might have mentioned, I had the redline set a little high so I could stretch out one of the short chutes at the local track. Down in Texas, I think Burt had been leaning a little harder on the limiter to stretch a longer straight and the abused valvetrain just gave up. Well, I had told him it was safe to work the car hard. At lunch I stopped by to pick up my repaired head - one new (used) valve, 16 new (used) lifters and a new (new) set of valve springs. The used parts came out of the piles of spares that are sitting around at Flyin' Miata and in my garage. That was faster and easier than I'd expected! entry 1355 of 1439 |