Valve-Lock Inspection to Save your Engine By Fergus Ogilvy Photos by Moore Good Ink   This advice may only help hard core race engine builders, but any time we have a chance to publish high quality tech like this info from Trend Performance, we'll do it. Wish I would have saw this before putting the valves back into my Falcon! (course that's anything but a racing engine!) Enjoy!   Assemble the valve locks on a valve and using your thumb and forefinger raise the spring retainer to its full height. If the assembly defies gravity and remains in place and doesn't rock, the quality of the valve locking assembly is superior. If, however, the assembly falls apart, the valve locking mechanism is deficient in one or more of its dimensions. The three critical dimensions of the valve lock 1. The outside angle: The precision of the outside angle, which might be 7, 8, 9, or even 10 degrees, is properly measured on a sine vice. For ease of valve lock removal, high revving racing engines often use locks with the greater angle. The greater the angle, however, the more...