Triumph Cylinder Head

During the tragic valve/piston integration incident, my cylinder head got really tore up. The left side combustion chamber got chewed hard core. That's what happens when you throw valves. So, I had two spare heads, I sent one along with my other parts during the whole Let's-Rip-Mark-Off-Fest...and interestingly enough never got it back. I have my suspicions about that. I think it got rebuilt and sent to another customer. Evidence? No...but he said it was ready to run about a week before telling me it couldn't be repaired.
When it became apparent that I was getting hosed, I got hooked up with Phil Wyatt (thank you, Adam). Phil took what was otherwise a chunk of scrap aluminum and turned it into a gorgeous functioning part. Phil charged me $600 to do some pretty extensive work. About half of what my previous source was trying to charge me for half the amount of work!

Valve go BOOM! The intake valve clattered around in there and did its best to destroy my head. For most of us, this is unrepairable. On the bright side, there are a few good Triumph head guys out there that can actually salvage it. We may be looking into that for the next engine. For now, this head is shelved.

My spare head after rework. Phil knocked it out of the park. Triton valve springs and lots of goodies are made in-house...including the valves.

C'mon...that's gorgeous! Also, this head is for a single carburetor. My old one was dual. More on that later.

If you look closely at the valve seat on the left, you'll see some bronze. The thing about Triumph heads is that the valve seats are cast iron...and the aluminum is then cast around the seat. You can't remove the seat like you can on most other cylinder heads. This is why they get expensive. If you need to replace a seat, you either replace the whole head, or find one of the guys that can machine out the cast iron and replace it with bronze. Regardless, this may be the last rebuild on this head. It is running out of margin, if it needs to be decked again, there may not be enough material left to machine a flat surface.

Before being sent out for rework, it looked like this. I'm not a fan of sandblasting aluminum. It looks like crap to me. I think you do more harm than good. Chemical cleaning, or soft media are best. I'm not the one who did the sandblasting.

You can see that the valve seats got sandblasted too. Yay! That makes doing a valve job soooo much easier...no, not really. I honestly thought that this head was a paperweight until I received it back from Phil.