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b230 bucket wear

blkaplan

50 shades of beige
300+ Club
Joined
Jul 30, 2002
Location
Rockville, MD
I popped a head gasket a while back on my 92 that got mothballed for a bunch of months. I am back to working on it and after cleaning all the surfaces in the head I noticed that all of the lifter buckets had degradation on the hard wear surface on the inside where the top of the valve touches.

I searched through my basket of all old heads and found some that were still clean to swap in. I thought it was interesting because i have never heard of anyone mentioning this issue.

Is this common? Do all b230s running around have this and no one notices because its out of sight out of mind?
 
I've noticed this before when replacing valve hushers. Wondered how oil is even supposed to get in between the stem and the bucket to prevent wear- just from splashing from the valve spring? The buckets may or may not rotate relative to the valve stem probably depending on the camshaft lobe profiles- that could be making the difference between some that show wear and some that don't.
 
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With the old RSI double valve springs I found the retainers where hitting the bottom of the buckets some on the edge when I took them apart after a few thousand miles. I'm sure stiffer springs makes them wear faster for sure. I got a lot of buckets out in the shop I can go look at and report back the wear on them.
 
How much wear? Usually it's smooth and polished where the valve stem sits, even on 200k+ mile engines.
 
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