Anybody replace their own bronze valve guides?

[Anonymous]

Anybody out there replace their own guides, bronze in particular?
Giving consideration to buying the Goodson Classic Bronze tool kit.
http://www.goodson.com/pdfcatalog.html
Head section:
http://www.goodson.com/2004_Catalog/Cyl_Head.pdf
Page 42 & 43
If you have done your own, how do you feel about the ease of doing that job?
My calculations show about $475 for the first kit and then about $300 for the additional parts to do another size. (Plus liners!)
Right ow 5/16 and 11/32 would do most of my heads.
Anybody used these critters?
Or optionally the coiled bronze guides on page 44.
ANY information would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
DaveP

 

[alloydave]

I have sold Goodson and k-line valve guide inserts in my last job .
The tooling is the expensive bit and you would have to be doing a lot of
valve work to justify the cost. The bronze liners for the guides were about
$1.20 nz each ,where a brand new cast iron guide go for $6.00 nz each.
If you were going to get your valve seats cut i would probably go for new guide replacement. We have a lot of machinist in NZ doing valve guide insert work and they all seem to be doin ok ,but they do like to bitch
when they break a reamer and have to fork out a couple of hundred bucks .Most of the shops have had to upgrade or expand there installation kits to accomodate the japanese cars 5.5mm , 6mm and 7mm valve guides ,these kits from memory can be upto $600 + nzd each.
If your going to do a lot of head work you would have to work out the price per valve and how many you would have to do to recoup your cost in tooling up . Insert valve guides are a good fix and alot of older cars need this done ,it may not take to long to be on the up.

cheers Dave

 

[Anonymous]

alloydave,
Thanks very much for the feedback.
I always do a cost analysis, but sometimes I just want to do the whole job anyway, cost aside.
I have about 5 I6 cylinder heads and about 3 v8 and 2 v6 bowtie size to work on also.
At about $10 per cylinder, which is what seems toi be the price here right now It's a break even deal.
Also keeps me out of trouble.
And I need all the help I can get in that venue!
Thanks again.
DaveP