Ah. . . . I see. Well, when needs, must I suppose but I can't see it lasting very long. Of course Ford probably assumed, correctly, that any servicing after manufacture would have the gap close up with valve lapping work and only foot grinding would usually be necessary.

Alex has a point too, although Ford is unlikely to have such stuff as sodium filled valves, but the thought of taking a torch to these is exciting indeed.

That said Richard, I have necessarily recovered tracta joint drive claws by welding the unacceptable pits using a dissimilar metal rod and then having the faces ground back to dimension. The nature of these, according to Oerlikon, is to leach some carbon from the underlying material and make a weld of similar hardness to the surrounding material. Certainly the weld, like the claw, is virtually un-fileable.

The downside is that they are 1 GBP per rod and you have to buy 5kg or so which is a 100 rod/100 pound package. Plus VAT of course.

R.