Valve Keepers

I have a head sitting on a shelf with big valves and (possibly) some light porting. When tax time rolls around and I have a few extra bucks in my pocket I might go ahead and get a new cam for it and swap it back into the ol' TC. This one I actually took out of the car recently because the cam got destroyed and it needed new cam bearings installed so it ended up being easier and cheaper for me to just swap head for the time being.

Now for my question... I noticed that the valve stems and keepers are of a single-groove design as opposed to the stock 3-groove. Should I be concerned about this at all? Both the intake and exhaust valves in this head are non-magnetic which I take to be a good thing. Other than that I don't really know much about the head as I bought it from someone who had already had all of the work done to it.

Thoughts?

B Sir the aftermarket valves usually have single groove keepers. The use of single groove units gives you the ability to select different offset keeper locating grooves. This allows for correcting retainer installed height. With some cams this is necessary and the combination of different retainers and heights can be adjusted. Normally multi groove retainer are fixed height as far as i know. The single ones are better in my view. Hope this helps. Also the 2.3 TURBO uses different exhaust valves. The intakes are the same. Have a good weekend sir

yes.....high performance valves are single groove. they lock tightly on the valve and the 3 groove keepers/valves allow the valve to rotate which can cause a failure under extreme use.

OK well that's good. I noticed that when everything is in place the keepers don't actually touch each other like they do on my other head. Now that makes sense.

I don't remember what the material that the exhaust valves are made of is called, but I assume that if the valves are non-magnetic I should be safe, right? It's not bad for the intake valves to be of the same material is it?

The intakes don't get as hot as the exhaust valves and don't need to be made of the same material as the exhausts.

Yeah I was mainly wondering about the intake valves and if they "should" be different than the exhaust valves or if it matters - assuming they are both made up of the "exhaust valve alloy". I know they are usually different and in the head that is in the car now the intake valves are magnetic, but the exhaust valves are not which I believe is how it should be, but in the other head, both the intake and exhaust valves are non-magnetic. I was assuming this is OK... just looking for verification.

By the way - can anyone recall what the alloy is called that the exhaust valves are comprised of?

Materials
Exhaust valves are typically made of 21-4N, 23-8N for many performance applications. These materials are austenitic, nitrogen-bearing chrome-nickel alloys possessing excellent high temperature strength, hardness and corrosion resistance to combustion products. Inconel is another material called a “superalloy” that is often used in exhaust valves where there are very high temperatures. Its use is growing among turbo and supercharged applications. Stellite facing alloys are being used in high heat, high combustion applications such as CNG, marine and also turbo diesel applications.