Let me see if I got this sraight...the valve retainer is sticking to the two piece locks at the top of the valve stem? You compress the spring and the spring/retainer assembly doesn't drop down because it's stuck to the locks? If that's the case, is it possible to put the rope back into the combustion chamber to keep the valve somewhat up against the head, compress the spring assembly, and then get a larger diameter punch to strike the valve retainer to try and drive it downwards?

 

That's pretty much what I've done. Put air in the cylinder, put a socket over the retainer and give it a whack. I guess you have real stubborn retainers on the intake. I tried to upload a photo of my VS compressor but the file is too large. Anyway it has the two feet that sit on the retainer and two arms that grab the coils. Then you tighten.

 

Are you in Austin ? If so, and you are having some (legitimate) fears about the rope technique, and find yourself stymied, I would suggest getting your car towed out to Cedar Valley Motors and watch Michael J. at work.

or alternatively,

The amount of time you are spending in this is starting to make just pulling the heads seem like a timesaver. The hardest part about pulling the heads is all mental. Once the mental roadblock is licked, and you decide that's your plan, it really goes very quickly.

Z

 

^^^ what I was also thinking. $100 for a head set and a few $ more for coolant and oil seems cheap compared to the headaches your giving yourself. Plus you can take a look at the valves to see if you actually do have any issues going on inside, right? I just did stem seals on a big block that only had 50,000 miles on it. Fortunately I had the heads off, as this is what I found!

 

Kelly,
From time to time I have had to hit the outside edge of the retainer ( try to hit "in line" with the ends of the locks) and they have popped. The valve won't bend.

 

This probably isn't what you want to hear, but I really think you need to pull the heads. I pulled the heads off mine, and thank god I did. Even using the spring compressor I linked below, I had a hell of a time getting mine to break free. Soaked overnight in PB blaster (this is after hot-tanking the heads with springs still in them), hit with a socket, nothing worked.

Bought the compressor below, and it worked. Note to anyone who uses this type of tool: The handle is for gross adjustment of the tool, NOT TO COMPRESS THE SPRING. Get it into the ball park with the handle, then use the C-clamp styple threaded adjustment to do the compressing (this side is on the valve face). You can break the tool if you try to use the handle, ask me how I know.

Using this tool, I would tighten until the spring was nearly fully compressed, and then give it a couple of taps on the keeper-side of the tool, and it would crack the keepers free.


https://www.amazon.com/OTC-4572-Lar...essor/dp/B000F5ECUY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1495732463&sr=8-3&keywords=otc+valve


Good luck, headgaskets are pretty cheap.

 

Yeah, pulling the heads is not really a huge issue since the intake is off right now anyways... theoretically. The problem is doing it with the engine in the car. I don't think that I can reliably get them off of the car without dropping them because I have to wrangle them around so much stuff and... well, iron heads are really heavy and I'm kind of a weenie when it comes to gross arm strength. It's not the actual steps to removing and replacing them that I'm uncomfortable with, it's the likelihood of me dropping or scratching them and ruining them. It's just way too high. Don't have the time to fix that, nor is that a can of worms I am even willing to think about opening. If I was in NC with Chas, this would be a million times easier and it would be done in a couple hours flat with his muscle power and know-how... but I'm not, so it's not.

This motor was assembled a year and a half ago and only has 15,000 miles or so on it. The valve keepers should not be THAT stuck.

Tom - Yep, I've got the same valve spring compressor as you. Conveniently, someone has welded a nut on the top of it so I can get a wrench on it and really compress it without killing my fingers

Gt350sr - my valves look gunked worse than that! The seals have really been leaking quite a lot, it seems.

I put PB blaster on the springs last night, so we'll see what I find later today. Maybe I'll give the rope trick another stab and get more (and thicker) rope to avoid squashing it between the valve and head.

The car goes nowhere on a flatbed. If I can't fix the damn thing myself, I might as well not even have it. For the record, I really have not spent THAT much time on this... just a couple hours here and there as I have time. Need to get cranking on this now though, that's for sure. I am just a very slow worker because I am very paranoid

Thanks for the tips and keep them coming.

 

I've had just the intake keepers stick lots of times. They usually are touching each other on one side and have a slight gap on the other. I just stick a tiny pocket screwdriver (the freebies from Snap-On rock!) in the gap and pry a little and one or both will pop off. Sometimes the second one needs and additional tiny sideways tap with a small hammer.
This is all assuming the valves are held up by air or rope and the spring is fully compressed. Sometimes the retainer sticks on the keepers too but I've never needed more than a little tap down to pop one loose.

I've seen other people disassemble this stuff by whacking away with a fair sized hammer but I've always preferred to invest in more tools so that I only need a persuasive tap here and there.

 

Well, good news! The valve keepers that I put PB Blaster on have now let go So I really only have a couple left, and have done minimal damage today.

The bad news is that I forgot to put PB Blaster on two of them, apparently... :shrug: So those ones are still stuck. Maybe I'll try that pocket screwdriver idea, as both of them are oriented the way you described (touching on one side, gap on the other). Or I'll just glare at them until tomorrow, when they will magically come free without complaint.

The most effective technique that I have arrived at is to put the cylinder at TDC, put 120 psi of air in it (not enough to force the piston back down to the bottom of the cylinder), and then put a spark plug socket over the valve retainer and tap on it with a sledge. Previously I was tapping on the socket with a rubber mallet and I think it just did not shock it enough. Tapping a bunch of times with the sledge is more like an impact and shocks the keepers free more easily.

Of course, this does not work for the ones that have not been PB blasted.

Examination of the keepers and the valve stem, once removed, reveals nothing nefarious. I had expected to see heat marks or some kind of grungy buildup on the stem or the keeper, given how stuck they are, but there's not anything there. So I guess that's good.

Cylinders 1 and 8 are leaking pretty good past the rings, which is annoying. Still hoping they settle down as there are reports of these rings taking as long as 15,000 miles to seat properly (and that's a little over how many miles I have on this engine).

Given the buildup on the intake valves that I can see through the intake ports, I am hopeful that these new seals will mostly solve the oil consumption issue. Half of the old seals I'm pulling off are nice and supple, and the other half are rock hard. Teach me to use Felpro seals in an engine...

 

The most effective technique that I have arrived at is to put the cylinder at TDC, put 120 psi of air in it (not enough to force the piston back down to the bottom of the cylinder), and then put a spark plug socket over the valve retainer and tap on it with a sledge. Previously I was tapping on the socket with a rubber mallet and I think it just did not shock it enough. Tapping a bunch of times with the sledge is more like an impact and shocks the keepers free more easily.

120 psi puts almost 5000lb of force on the piston (and almost 1000lb on the valve). More than enough to force it down. I think I used like 40-50 psi when I did mine. Even then I had it push the piston over if it wasn't exactly TDC.

The little screwdriver as mentioned (tweaker screwdriver) really helps too. I just put some pressure on the springs with the compressor and gave it a good whack with a soft hammer. They'll break loose. You shouldn't need any penetrating oil.

 

Something to consider- there are 7* locks and 10* locks and matching retainers that go with them. Is there any chance you have 7* locks and 10* retainers or vice versa?

 

valve locks, intake valve deposits

Kelly, I use the drilled out spark plug and 100 lbs of air. And a big socket and a rubber hammer, and then the little Snap On screwdriver. And on the intake valves, 90 % of that nasty stuff on the back of the valves comes from your gasoline. The C9 and C10 hydrcarbons in the gasoline coat the valves and don't evaporate very well. If you use better gasoline, or add detergent to your gasoline, you can almost totally eliminate this problem. In my area, ALL, and I do mean ALL ( never mind what the marina says......) of our gasoline has ethanol in. Doesn't matter if you like ethanol politically or if you think it is a good idea or not. Its in there. Has been since mid-late eighties. And ethanol is a very good detergent. And we don't have intake valve deposits anymore. Just doesn't happen here. Used to, but not anymore. LSG

 

Ugh! I went to tackle that last valve stem seal tonight (ran out of time last night), and the keepers let go nice and easy. The "ugh" is that the valve guide has been cut down just enough that I can't get the seal to hold onto it. So of the 16 valve guides... 1 is too short to hold a positive seal... and of course it's the last one I'm messing with

Now not sure if I should stick an umbrella seal back on it or if I should just let the positive seal be the new umbrella. Either way, it will not go on and stay on, as the bottom clamping band is hitting right at the top edge of the guide, so every time the valve comes up, the seal just pops right off. Infuriating!

So, should I put an umbrella on it? Or let the not-so-positive stay?

Kelly, I use the drilled out spark plug and 100 lbs of air. And a big socket and a rubber hammer, and then the little Snap On screwdriver. And on the intake valves, 90 % of that nasty stuff on the back of the valves comes from your gasoline. The C9 and C10 hydrcarbons in the gasoline coat the valves and don't evaporate very well. If you use better gasoline, or add detergent to your gasoline, you can almost totally eliminate this problem. In my area, ALL, and I do mean ALL ( never mind what the marina says......) of our gasoline has ethanol in. Doesn't matter if you like ethanol politically or if you think it is a good idea or not. Its in there. Has been since mid-late eighties. And ethanol is a very good detergent. And we don't have intake valve deposits anymore. Just doesn't happen here. Used to, but not anymore. LSG

Well, don't know what to tell you about my gas. I just put in premium whatever from whatever gas station is closest to the highway or my house. Guarantee you that all of it has ethanol in it, and guarantee you that I have intake deposits nonetheless... lol.

 

Kelly. I know you like to know the why's and what fors so hope this helps. NOT meant as retainer 101 so keep that in mind. It's a common misconception that valve retainer keepers hold the spring because of the groove in the valve and step on the keepers. Not true. The groove is simply a locator. The retainer is actually held in a collet fashion by the retainer/lock angle and spring pressure against it. As said above, take a small brass hammer and hit around the circumference of the retainer and don't be shy. You'll here a tink tink tink and eventually a dull thud when the retainer is broken loose of the keepers. No need for air or rope or anything to disengage the hold. Just tap with authority on the retainer edge. Try it. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

 

I stopped for gas last week in Tulsa at a Shell station whose (older and somewhat grubby) fuel pumps proudly proclaimed that ALL their grades of fuel were completely alcohol-free. All were priced about ten cents higher than the surrounding stations too. I filled up with it for the heck of it and the Expedition failed to notice any difference as far as I could tell.

I find it a little difficult to picture a notably shorter guide. I'm not OCD that I know of but THAT sure would bug me. On the practical side I wonder if you could put a knurl on the guide to help the seal grab. (If I have a handle on what the situation is). Lacking an expensive and difficult to find knurling tool, a shadetree type might press into use a tubing cutter. The kind with a wheel in it that you spin round and round a line until it parts. In this case you would just use it to imprint the cutting marks, which can be a fair knurl substitute. IF there is one that will fit where you need it. Or maybe some similar idea to give the seal a bit of traction.

Tip :the above "knurling" trick is a rather skeezy way to keep rubber hoses from popping off steel lines. The correct thing to do is form a bubble flare on the steel line and then clamp the hose. But you don't always have such a flaring tool on hand and two or three parallel light "cuts" on a line give a hose a lot more bite when a clamp is then tightened at that location.

 

Well, here's what happened, near as I can tell: the PO, way back when, replaced the valve guides with truck-sized "whatever I can find" guides. They are very large diameter and they are not evenly installed height-wise.

Then when I had the machine shop put in new guides, they simply drilled out the old guides and installed the new guides within the bigger old guides. So all of THOSE new guides are evenly installed, but they didn't bother to fix what was wrong with the old guides. At the time that I got the heads back from them I wasn't looking for weirdness with the way the guides looked, just checked for play and called it good... my mistake there. The shop came highly recommended.

Kind of a lazy "diagram" of how these guides look (valve stem sticking out of top, middle part is the new guide that's nested within the old guide, bottom part is the old fat guide)...

The above diagram is what the majority of the guides look like. However, this one valve guide giving me issues looks like this:

So the issue I am running into now is that the new smaller diameter guides are pretty tall, which is fine. But when the distance between the shoulder of the new guide and the shoulder of the old guide is just large enough, there's no way for the seal to grab on to the old guide - because the top of it bottoms out on the top of the new guide, but the distance is too far for the base of the seal to grab the old guide. It's very annoying.

Fortunately I figured that Jane would give me hell in some way or another so I ordered some viton umbrella seals along with these positive seals... guess I'm just going to pop one of those on and it'll just have to be "good enough". I'm sure I'll rip my hair out years down the road when I've forgotten about then and rediscover it.

I will measure to verify that this thing isn't just being a PITA, but I am pretty sure that it is just not going to grab because it's right on the edge of the guide. Knurling may help it briefly, but I don't think I'd trust it to withstand thousands of hours of drivetrain vibration... we shall see.

 

The umbrella seals made of viton are pretty good. They don't deteriorate as bad like the old rubber ones did. They are basically oil deflectors that move up and down with the valve where the positive seals wipe the valve stem.

I think you will be ok with using that one umbrella seal on there.

 

stem seals

Kelly, it sure sounds like someone left you a mess in there. Any chance the tall portion of the 1 problem spot can hold a 35-305V or some other part number ? Otherwise, I'd put the new umbrella on that one and call it happy. At valvejob time you could fix the guides all properly. Intake or exhaust ? What kind of heads does Jane have, anyway ? LSG