I made a post about some questions I had concerning the differences in Ferrea and Manley valves in GenAuto but I see that I may get more responses in here. Anyways, I will be outfitting my bare Trickflow LT1 heads with new valves and such. I can find the weights for all Manley valves on their website, but I cannot find any weights listed for the Ferrea valves. Does anyone know what Ferrea valves weigh? I will be running a custom camshaft with duration around 240-245ish @.050 with lift being near .575 give or take a little. I am also running beehives. The main question that I have is this: Is there really any justification for me to spend huge bucks on titanium valves/retainers and such or can I get away with spending much less and just save a little weight with the spring choice and an undercut stemmed valve? At what point is there going to be no more gains made on reducing valvetrain weight with my combo? Case in point-the Ferrea 6000 series valves run about 120 bucks per set. I've been told they are on the heavy side, but I have no data to prove this. The next best Ferrea valve is the competition plus which runs over 250 per set. I would hope that the competition plus valves are much lighter to offset the price increase, but I can't find the answers anywhere on the internet. My last post got sidetracked to a pcm/rpm debate which sucked for me. Any answers to my questions will be very much appreciated! Thanks in advance!

 

You can buy a cheap digital scale at the local office supplies stores that is good down to 1 gram. I have a Pelouze scale I bought years ago that's always done good by me. I've balanced out piston sets, rods, etc. on that $20 piece of junk and never had a problem. It's also done more than it's fair share of "gee, I wonder what this weighs" kinda work for me, too.

Here's a fun one: compare the weights of a Vortec 1.25" retainer, an older style 1.25" retainer and a typical steel 1.45" high performance retainer. Your eyes will fall out of your head. Heh heh.

I would rather weigh everything myself than go by published numbers. Buy both sets, weigh them yourself and send back the set you don't want. OK, maybe that's a PITA but you'll never regret buying a cheap digital scale.

 

FWIW, the hollow stem 2.055 x 5.010" Ferrea is 108g the standard 6000 series of the same size is 123g

Some Ferrea valves are lighter than others, I've seen some with larger head diameters come in 10g lighter than valves with smaller head diameters.

Bret

 

BTW, while you're getting the lightest valve/spring/retainer combo you can manage, don't forget to get nice, stiff pushrods. And don't run any higher spring pressures than you NEED to.

 

Problem is most dont know how much spring pressure they need!

 

Bret,

I'd send anyone here $100 if they could tell me exactly how much spring is "needed" for a certain combination of valvetrain components. Let's just change the mass moment of inertia for a rocker by swapping to another design and recalculate it.

Show your work.

-Mindgame

 

I wish I had the coin for that program Mindgame... it's out there but if I have to ask how much it costs I can't afford it.

 

If you guys are done with the wisecracks...?


My concern was with the common tendency for people to go with big old triple spring 350lb monsters when they really need a 150lb single.


Unless you want to tell me that people stopped making that mistake...?

 

People both under-spring and over-spring all the time. 1.55" triples is certainly overkill unless you're going NASCAR racing or something. But for every one of those there's 100 other guys trying to make stock valve springs with 70 lbs. on the seat run a street performance hydraulic roller up to 6500 and wondering why the motor hits a brick wall at 5800.

Use the springs recommended and make the valvetrain lighter and stiffer any chance you can get. For the average guy, like me, you should "follow the recipe." You could get lucky and find a combo that works usign your own recipe, but if you get it wrong it's just not worth the headache.

 

No... actually I'm just getting started.

Joking aside..... you missed the point Lame. I wasn't directing anything at you or anyone in particular. Only to say that you must always design in some kind of safety factor. This is definitely one of those areas where a little too much is fine and not enough will cost you dearly. FWIW, I'd err on the side of "too much" any day in this situation.

The other side of my point was simple but I'll rephrase...

While we are being geniuses in stating that one should only use enough spring to get the job done, then that from my understanding implies that "how much is needed" is already known?

Please define that conclusion for me sometime.

I'm not bashing anyone, I'm sure there are guys here who have alot of dyno time with various cam profiles and component masses. I'm just not one of those guys. I do a few formulas here and there, use a little of my past experience and pick my springs. It hasn't failed me in a very long time and guess what... my stuff is very reliable.

In knowing what is enough we're assuming that we know the rate of acceleration at the lobe, we know all valvetrain masses and we know our inertial moments for the rocker. Hmm, do we really?

Yeah... I'm being a smartass but what the hell, I don't take this forum as seriously as I use too. WORK is serious and for me, this is fun. I try to keep it all in perspective.

People... what can you say, there are lots of idiots out there.

-Mindgame

 

MG, I was referring to this...

4stHEAD

Gets pretty in depth....



As I said if ya gotta ask.......

 

I didn't know Rube Goldberg was Bret's alter ego?



Rich

 

That's an engineer for ya!

Bret,
Sell enough of those intake adaptors and you can buy that no problem. The real trick is getting good data into the program. You know the rest.....

-Mindgame

 

GIGO that's always the key.

Rich,

TOO FUNNY!

Bret