Dose anyone know if there is a method of replacing a vlave spring without removing the head. The motor had noticlable knoc and upon removing the valve cover a component of the valve spring keeper was found on top of the head. I belive that I have heard of a method of replacing the spring without removing the head but the details are a little fuzzy and I dont remember who I was talking to about it. Any help would be great.

 

This may be a thought. I've never actually done it, but seems reasonable...

Go buy yerself some clean nylon rope(say 3/16" dia.) and, while your piston is down, feed it thru your sparkplug hole, until you can't fit anymore in.(Be sure to keep aholt of the end. ) Then rotate your engine to compact the rope up to the valves. This will keep your valve closed while changing out valve.

After changing out, be sure to rotate OPPOSITE direction as you first rotated, then pull rope out.

Take it as you will. As I stated, never done it, but seems very logical as long as you rotate the opposite direction the second time.(This will keep your valves from closing in on the nylon rope.)

Someone else may have a better idea too!

Mike

 

In general, what Mike is suggesting works. I actually have done the rope procedure. First, you'll need a valve spring compressor. Do not attempt the job w/o one. In terms of the rope, yes, 3/16" is fine...nylon, cotton...whatever. Rotate the engine by hand (wrench on crank pulley is fine) and get the affected cylinder's piston to bottom dead center (or close to it. Stuff as much rope as you can in the spark plug hole. Then using the wrench on the crank pulley, try to bring that piston to top dead center (doesn't matter which way u rotate it!). If you stuffed enough rope in the cylinder, you'll not be able to come even close to TDC (you might be 1/4 turn away or so). Now you can be brave in that the valve isn't gonna go "bloop!" and disappear into the abyss of the cylinder. By the way, have you protected yourself from injury by wearing eye protection through all this? If not, stop right now and get it. You've only got two eyes and you wanna keep use of both, right? Ok, now compress the spring. Oh, oh. Already compressed? Crap. Take the rope out and rotate the engine 'nother turn and repeat the rope insertion again. You'll find that the valve spring you were working on will now have large spaces between the windings. It is NOT uncompressed, though, so watch it. Compress the spring with the tool. Now remove the parts representing the valve keeper. Do everything in reverse to reassemble and you're good to go. Be sure you've got the keeper in properly. It won't be that difficult to do, believe me.

Go for it, man.
Paul

 

I also have done the rope trick, but sense I did not have a valve spring compressor I used 2 screw drivers and a bare rocker shaft bolted in place too pry down the spring.

 

Valve spring compressors are cheap (arund $20), so why risk injury using a tool that's not designed to do the job? Are your eyes worth 20 bucks? If the answer is "yes" then you know what to do.
Paul

 

if you don't want to fiddle with all that string stuff and you have an air compressor, you can buy a fitting that goes in your spark plug hole and screw a air hose nipple into the end of it and then just plug in your air line, do the job, and then unplug the line and forget about it... leave your compressor turned on cause you may have a little blow by if the motor's old and running low on compression, you don't want to run outta pressure in that cylinder or you'll be pulling the head to fish out the valve.. LOL

 

Sometimes when you are out along the side of the road you do what you have to do.

 

The air compressor method seems like a good one. I just tried it on a 360 to replace the valve seals and it worked great. Once the spark plug was removed and the adapter put in and charged with air, I had no problem removing the retainer and spring with a valve spring compressor.

Next time I'll try the rope.

jeremy

 

I changed all 16 stem seals using the air compressor method went one step furthure and used a pressure regulator If I remeber correctly it only took about 75 psi to hold it in place.

I would also recomend the use of a spring compressor I think your local auto supply will loan you one also..

Jon