I posted these pictures once before, for a different question.

First photo shows cylinder one exhaust valve, cylinder two looks similar. Look at the area around the valve stem where it meets the head. It looks to have quite a bit of metal around it.

Now look at the same area in the next photo. This photo shows cylinder number three, cylinder four looks just like it. My concern is that there is not as much metal around the valve stem.

Is this an OH S**T situation?

Photo #2

It's so hard to tell with all that carbon, clean it up and take some more pic's.A bit of missing material may not be terminal, as long as it isn't the sealing surface.

If you don't want to get dirty take them to a local auto machine shop and have them remove the valves. Then ask them to blast just the intake/exhaust ports, combustion chamber and the plug hole, then look for cracks and damage. Then post the pic's. At least you will know the extent of the repaires required when you send them to a head shop.

Also a good head shop can repair the damage if the heads need welding.

It's time for a rebuild anyways.

Looks just like carbon to me, Eric. As suggested you can have that blasted off. Are the heads off or are you just shooting the pics with the engine in the car.
That part of the guide can be ground away when porting and flowing the heads so I don't think its that important if a small piece has come off. That would be strange that it did thou.
You can also just reach up in there with a small wire brush to clean off some of that carbon. How many miles on the heads? What were the compression readings?
If you have the time and money it might be worth it to pop them off to be rebuilt.
Geoff

In the first photo the valve guide extends a little out of the boss in the head, I think that is the additional metal you see. The end of the guide in the second photo could be eroded. Most likely some of the guides were replaced at one time and are slightly different lengths.
Looks like it's time for a valve job anyway.

Heads are still in the car no plans to pull the engine as of yet.

Seeing the valve guide in the first photo and not in the second is what caught my eye. To me it looks like quite a bit of head metal has been removed around the guide area (you can see this by the shadowing of the second photo).

I have no idea of the past history of this engine, but seeing this ONLY on the 3-4 cyl sure makes me go hmmm. Looks like someone was probably in there before. I'm assuming this could only be manmade? Maybe I can finally find a use for that J-B Weld I bought a while back.

Haven't done the compression check as of yet...finding the time to work on the car has become quite the challenge with our first little one showing up.

Your diggin deep for issues.

Leave it alone.

We completely take those off in our high flow heads. The guide is only held in by about 12-14 mms of the head (if that) and its not on the ends of the guide. It is in the middle. We cut down the top and the bottom of the heads. If you think about it.. the guide is not really under any load as long as it is getting oil. The load is from the rocker arm (more of a up/down load than a in/out load)

Take a small pic and poke at it until you get some carbon off.


B

Yea, you are probably right. It's an old engine....just drive it.



Nuff said.