"Tom Byrne" <kerib@ptd.net> wrote:
> I do not want to pull the heads. I do not want to disassemble the engine
> until rebuild time. Though the engine has 116K miles on it, all cylinders
> are between 170 and 175 psi and it burn no oil what so ever.
You can change the valve springs with the heads still on, its just
a bit more involved with extra steps so that you don't drop the valve
down into the cylinder.
It would probably be a good idea to index the engine so that the
piston is at TDC for the particular cylinder you are working on, just
so that if you accidentally drop the valve, it will hit the piston and
stop instead of dropping down inside. You can use the hose from a
compression tester, hooked up to an air compressor to pressurize the
cylinder (which will work if the piston is at TDC on the power stroke,
since both valves will be closed); that will hold the valves up in the
head while you put a valve spring compressor on the valve and remove
the keepers, then the spring will come off, remove it from the
compressor, swap the retainer over to the new spring, compress it, pop
it back on the valve, put the keepers back in place and release the
valve spring compressor. You do both valves, then turn the engine
again to get the next piston to TDC, and repeat. It takes a bit
longer than if you've got the heads off the engine just because you
have to take those extra steps to insure against dropping a valve into
the cylinder, but its pretty easy to do.
If moving the piston to TDC still does not get the piston close
enough to the head to avoid dropping the valve into the cylinder (or
you do not want to bother spinning the engine), you can feed a bunch
of rope through the spark plug hole and into the cylinder to fill the
void.
--
-Jon-
.- Jon Steiger -- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com -.
| '96 Kolb Firefly, '96 Suzuki Intruder, Miscellaneous Mopars |
`-------------------------------- http://www.jonsteiger.com --'
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