retainers

how do you tell which degree retainers you have?

The 10* retainers have a much bigger hole in the middle of them than the 7* retainers. You have 10* retainers on your TFS A-460 heads and they are Bead-Loc keepers.

Now then, it is easy to get the Super 7* or some people call them Super 8* retainers mixed up with 10* retainers. Be careful there.

The best way to check, is to have one of the valves out of the head, drop your retainer on it, then put on a pair of your locks, and pull your retainer up hard against the locks. Everything should "seat" correctly and your retainer should not be able to wiggle or wobble around the valve stem, with pressure applied against the locks.

Of course it goes without saying, that 3/8" stem locks, 11/32" stem locks, 5/16" stem locks are NOT interchangeable. Likewise never put a square groove lock on a Bead-Loc stem valve, and/or vice versa.

I use Bead-Loc keepers on just about all my titanium valve heads and I try to make sure that I send a couple of extra Bead-Locs along with the heads to my customers, in case they lose one. The reason being, you most likely will not find Bead-Loc keepers at your local mom & pop speed shop. The other thing I do, is color code them with a dab of paint.

Hope this helps,
Charlie Evans

thanks uncle charlie. I am going through my small block heads trying to figure out why the valves started floating. I have noticed some worn and polished shiney valve keepers. they weren't like that 12 runs before. all I did for changes was to replace the retainers with titanium ones and went to a larger diameter tapered push rod, and replace all the valves

I have thrown out about 6 keepers so far