Lash cap damaged valve tips

Always thought lash caps protect your valve tips?
Found 5 (No 1-2-3-4-5) intake valve tips damaged under lash caps.
Tops of all caps are fine and also all rockers.
Looks like the valve tip was too soft and now there is like a pin on the same place as the small hole that's in the lash cap.
Engine is about 7000 miles street driven. Gen 2 hemi with StageV heads and solid roller efi cam. Wide pad rockers and "street springs".
What the xxx happened?
No 6-7-8 are fine.

Too much lash?

Lash is as per cam instructions.
As are the other 3 which are not damaged.

Whose valves? Solid roller I assume. If so, what's the over the nose spring pressure and are you sure you are not going into coil bind? Coil bind really stresses valve train parts especially if the valve tips were not properly heat treated.

Not sure where the valves came from. Are StageV custom heads Cam specs are known D-1749-13-11/20/13. .659/.631 lift and matching springs. Just trying to find out wat could have caused this. Want to prevent repeat with new valves.

That's not been my experience when running lash caps on the street before. Your description does make me suspect the tip of those valves aren't hard enough, and might also have shown wear from the rocker arms if they didn't have the lash caps.

Not all lash caps have holes in the top. The last time I saw/used Crane's lash caps, they were solid (no "breather" hole).

I have seen this when the valve train has an issue. It could be not enough spring pressure, too much spring pressure, not enough spring rate, valves too heavy or the big one, push rods that flex, or flex too much.

That will hammer stuff that would not normally ever see damage.

I'm going to ASS U ME( ) those Stage V heads are Hemiriod heads, correct? If so how high are you revving that rascal? Who set those heads up? Do you know if all the open valve springs pressure are close to the same (+ or- 15 lbs) of each other? I'm thinking those lash caps (only) are floating off of the tips at the higher RPMs and then hammering them back onto the valve tips to make that impression on them

My speedshop called the valve supplier where they bought the valves from when we rebuild the engine. He says it's turning the lascaps and this causes them to eat-up the tips. Changing all intake and installing locking lashcaps.
@ Cab_Burge . It's a street engine. average rpm 4000 and max 6000.
@ Madscientist . There all checked for spring pressure and installed height.

Is that what makes sense to you? Or just what you wanted to hear? I wonder if the lash cap manufacturer would say something different?

I wonder why only on intakes

Ive seen this before.
Cam profile are typically more radical on intake side. The valve spring is not keeping the valve under control. Most of us don't have a spintron to test the valvetrain.

You have an unhappy intake valve train. Talk with your cam grinder about your intake lobe profile.

Some things they may tell you may surprise you. Seat pressure and weak springs kill parts. You are getting an early warning. I suspect you have too much valvespring for the lift. Meaning the valvespring is not being cycled properly. If you do not open the valve to .050" from coil bind the spring will dance around. For years we set spring height based on a psi for seat pressure or the manufacturer reccomendation for installed height. PAC has me setting spring height based on full open spring height. Amazing the difference it has made in valvespring life.

I regularly turn 9,000 and get incredible life.

^^^^^ This right here. I heard the same thing from Jim at Racer Brown.

That is good info Leon. i never new thought of that before. Always just set them for seat pressure and mad sure max lift was not coil bind. I am going to give your set up a try on my next set.
Thanks for sharing

enlightening info, Leon. Now we're learning!! glad I checked in on this thread.

kind of figured more of an effect of another cause... just not bright enough to know what to point the finger at. We had W5 mill that cracked the bodies of 4 Comp Cams roller lifters in 50 passes. Changed pushrods and went another direction on lifters, and it never happened again. Figured it was some weird harmonics deal... not like you ever hear of lifters cracking. At least we got lucky changing parts.

Thanks for this input. Will forward to speedshop. Cam is based on EFI can in Mr. Nedbal's book. Should be right.

Dutch.....are you setting your lash at operating temperature?.....did this with mine when it was on the dyno......when i got home and was cooled off i checked it cold.....mine grew .019.....something to look into

Did it grow and got wider or did it tighten up when cooled off

stage v aluminum heads....keith black aluminum block.....hot lash....22 intake...24 exhaust.....cold lash.....003 intake....005 exhaust.....tightened up by .019

Leon has it right. There is nothing wrong with the valves or the lash caps. What IS wrong is something in the valvetrain.

Now while it could be too much spring pressure, it could also be too little for how aggressive the intake lobe is and could actually be trying to "throw" the lifter off the cam......OR it falls out from under the lifter on the backside. This beats the hell out of valvetrain parts. How MUCH lift is of little consequence, it's how aggressive the lobe is.

We have guys on Drag Week with cams over an inch of lift and they live just fine. I just have to slow the lobes down and set the parts up right.

HEMI valvetrain is inherently bad already. Mismatched parts make it horrible