Diesel wrencher, I am wondering what your real motives are behiind posting all of this. I answered today, I answer 99% of the time, I answer text, email, private messages, smoke signals etc. I think you and another guy previously in this thread might have an axe to grind. If you did not, you might have taken my offer to pay to ship your head to me to measure all clearances and fix whatever is wrong for free. You keep saying it is the locks fault, but you will not check valve length, valve face depth or any other clearances.
You either don't want to check clearances because you want to keep the waters muddied, or you don't want me to see that there is no issue. If I am wrong in this assumption, allow me to help you isolate exactly where the issue is. If ther really is an issue, I want to find it and fix it. You have a head off of a 1989 Cummins. That head has been around a long time, there may have been work done on it to change installed height like aftermarket valves or pressed in seats.
You think almost 1,000 sets into this, if there was a systematic issue, it would have shown itself by now. That being said, anything made by human hands has the chance for error. If one of my manufacturers has sold me something with an issue, I will make it right. Since I helped you out on the build, If you wanted my help in resolving an issue I think you would have handled this differently.
Disturbed, if that is measurements off of one of my retainers, I would like to see the parts and make it right. If not, allow me to assume there is no issue.
On our new heads, the 1.850" valves we use are longer to give a slightly higher installed height for people running very high lift cams.
RonA, 1.350-1.390. The main issue is that they are consistent across the board. That is why a seat and guide machine is so importatn on the 24v heads. I think you have had bad luck with old school machining in the past.
Zach