The valves were somewhat worn, but mostly sticky, when I got this car; it bent pushrods twice. So I yanked off the head, had it checked for cracks and a standard refresh done. Lucky enough to not need any new hard parts. The shop managed to get chevy spring-clip style valve seals to fit.

I didn't find the real cause of the goo until later. In hindsight it was sort-of obvious when I first pulled the head off.

To make a long story short, there was something really bad dissolved in the gas tank. When I got the car it was out of gas, so I put two gallons of new gas in it, then drove to the gas station. (I was under the impression that it had been driven recently, and had just run out of gas. Dumb assumption!) As it turns out, this awoke the sleeping dragon; the whateveritwas [possibly a half-tank of gasoline that completely evaporated!] started dissolving, and it was like roofing hot-mop asphalt, gooey but burned into a varnish that glued valve stems into the guides. Oops.

Some pointless photos of the bad head stuff. That gooey stuff I originally thought came down from the valve stem as I was squirting AeroKroil on the operating valves to help unstick them when cold, before I took the head off. In hindsight that's stupid, there's way too much of this gunk and it obviously deposited on the intake valve tulip as it came in from the intake. Paying a bit more attention here would have saved me a lot of time and money.

I didn't take any photos of the rebuilt head before I installed it. Was that a mistake? It sure looked purty inside! Lots of oil in the top end -- too much, actually, due to a worn rocker shaft. I hope it's not oil-starving the bottom end.

The motor compartment cleaned up nicely. It wasn't that dirty, considering it's age. I cleaned anything I worked on, mostly on the left side. Battery box came out, got de-rusted as best I could and painted with Eastwood Rust-whatever.

Re-did the spark advance plumbing to come right off the manifold and not the carb, even with the small radiator, horrid four-blade fan with no shroud, it idles in traffic at 195 degrees. We'll see what it does with the heat, but it should be fine.