It is so nice to provide Patrick another opportunity to berate Chas.
Patrick, thanks for your input. One of problems encountered when you take the intake manifold off, is that you have to pull the rocker arms and lifters, along with the distributor. Knowing what the hot lash is does you no good when you are trying to establish the initial cold lash that you will be setting when you put everything back together. No matter how good you are, there is no way that when you put the lifters and rocker arms back on that they will be set exactly as they were previously, and the initial setting may have been wrong. In my case, the lash prior to taking everything apart was all over the place.
That was the problem we were having, what to set the lash at cold so that we would be close when we had the engine up and running again. From Patrick's input and what I found on my engine, between .014 and .018 cold is a good start, possibly leaning more towards the latter. Then after you have re-set the timing and have the engine up and running you can focus on hot lash.
My mechanic does not like having too much lash, as at higher rpm's the valve springs may not be able to keep up with the cam and you may lose some of the full cam effects. No bent rods or other ill effects with a hot lash of .020 and the engine definitely has more power than it did previously. I had lost the 2nd cylinder due to a torn intake gasket and
oil getting sucked into the cylinder and fouling the plug. My mechanic guesses that the previous mechanic had not tacked down the gasket and when he was putting the intake manifold back on it had pushed the gasket down onto a lip at the windage tray and that is why the gasket was split. So far no
oil leakage or consumption.
Thanks everyone for your feedback. Brent, I was hoping that you would chime in, as I have read many of your posts and value your thoughts.