I have been working on my 6.0 project slowly. I've already put the ARP rodbolts in and cleaned up the heads. I'm pretty satisfied on the work i've done on the heads being it was my first time. I brought them to the shop on monday for the radius valve job and get shaved. Question is how much can I take off safely? For those who don't know, it's a LQ9 (flat tops), didn't decide on camshaft but probably around .57x or .58x lift. Would I be safe with .020?

 

I have said this before, no two heads are the same,
as far as how much can you shave off without going too far, that is for the machine to decide.
let them check out the heads and tell you how far you can shave them down safely to up compression, could be O.30 could be O.40 could be as much as O.50 and more.

long time ago I had built a motor, decided to shave the heads, after letting the machine check them out, I found out that one head could go O.30 and to make the other head equal it had to be shaved O.45 this way all cylinders ran equal compression across the block.
if I had just slapped them on one side would have been slightly stronger then the other.

 

Are you running stock valves? With only .58x lift you should be fine with .020. Larger valves, cam lift and valve timing are all contributing factors determine p2v clearance when milling the heads. As far as structuraly, I have been told .060 is the max for a LSx type head.

 

Yea, i'm keeping the stock valves. I'm just worried about clearances with the flat top pistons.

 

I think this is the best mod you can do to these heads. I had a pair of stock heads milled .030 and home dremel porting, the truck would run mid 13's. Now I have a pair of Patriot Heads ported and polished with bigger valves but now I'm slower, high 13's. I think I missing that extra compression. Over the winter I'll probaly pull the Patriots and have them milled .030 also.
Definitely think your doing them heads some good by milling them though. See ya at the Thunder Shootout with my slow *** POS truck.

 

I see you're hating your truck these days as much as I am mine. One thing after another, eh?

 

Your damn right, spent over $3000 dollars to try for that final tenth of a second for 11's and I'm back to mid 12's. ******* bullshit, these shitty *** trucks!

 

We should just stop spending money on these and buy late model Lightnings, do a few mods, and enjoy 11s.

 

Dude, then we would be the fastest trucks at the Thunder Shootout for sure!