I took my head in today to UAP/NAPA, they only want $40 for a 4cylinder, to get milled

Upon a close examination of the head surface, there is very little space between the valves and the surface.

Unfortunatly, a couple of the valves stick past the surface and I may have to remove them

If you want to mill a decent amount, you'll have to take the valves out

But if you mill so low as to have the valves stick past the surface, will they then hit the pistons, when you crank the engine over??

What you can do right now is get some putty of some sort, and put some on your piston where the valve gets close to it, and then crank the engine over (by hand would probably be best), and then measure how much clearance there is now. Maybe factor in about 10 to 20 thou for valve movement at high rpms and the difference is how much you can safely mill it. You might want to double check with more than one cyl.

If it doesn't look good, there are ways to put eyebrow reliefs in the pistons. V8 guys do it alot when they add high lift cams and plane the heads for compression, so it shouldn't cost too much.

If you really need to plane your head, but aren't doing it for higher compression, then there might be a thicker head gasket to help out. Some places make gaskets too out of copper, so maybe they can custom make you one.

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Fast & Awesome Handling
'90 AWD
$h!tbox

Well I won't be getting the head milled...

Found out it's too badly warped, and it would have to be ground down way past the limit..

What can you do with a warped head??
Sell the aluminum for scrap?
It must weigh 30-40lbs...