Changing valve guide seals in the vehicle.
A common problem among vehicles especially older vehicles is leaking valve guide seals. They are a cheap item but the labor rate a shop can charge may make it very expensive. The task of changing your valve guide seals is actually fairly straight forward and can be accomplished in a weekend with a couple special tools.
A valve seal is a simple seal. There are several different kinds of valve seals depending on the time in which your vehicle was manufactured. The most effective kind of valve seal is the positive style seal, this fits over the valve guide itself and is stationary. The next seal is the umbrella style seal, this seal rides with the valve stem and prevents oil from going down the guide. The last style of valve seal is the o-ring. This was extremely common on older style engines and was the least effective of any of the seals. You don’t have to worry if you have o-ring style seals they were still effective at sealing the guide, it is just over time they become brittle due to heating and cooling.
If you have leaking valve seals on your vehicle it is likely that you will have an oil consumption problem. Another sign would be that if you have a puff of blue smoke on start up when your vehicle has sat overnight. This is because the oil from the valve train can leak down the guide and onto the top of the piston this will make your blue smoke on start up.
This procedure will discuss how to install new valve guide seals on your vehicle with the heads in place. It is also going to assume that you have a pushrod style motor, it is similar on a overhead cam motor but you may have to remove the cam and that you will need the timing chain procedure to reinstall, but the principle and procedures are similar.
Before starting this procedure you will want to know that you may cause serious engine damage if you do not follow these exact steps. You can risk having a valve fall into the cylinder and damage the piston. Make sure to follow all of the steps.
The Procedure
- Park your vehicle where it can sit for a weekend. Also make sure to allow plenty of time, even though it may be a relatively simple task, it is very time consuming.
- Disconnect the negative terminal on your battery.
- Remove the upper intake manifold. Tip I recommend buying little plastic baggies and labeling them and putting the bolts in them so you know which bolts are for what. I also recommend placing masking tape and numbers on vacuum hoses and fittings to make installation easier.
- Remove anything that is in the way of you getting to the valve covers and getting them removed.
- With the valve covers accessible remove them and set aside.
- You will then need to remove the spark plugs from all of the cylinders.
- The next step is to loosen up all of your rocker arms on your engine. You may have a rocker shaft, in this case remove all of the bolts in an even pattern until the rocker arm shaft can be removed. If you have individual rocker arms then simply remove the nuts and set the rocker arms aside. It is a good idea to label which cylinder and whether or not it is an intake or exhaust rocker arm and set them aside. This will ensure that your rocker arms will go back on the original cylinder they were from.
- With the rocker arms removed you now are looking at the valves. Take a soft faced hammer such as this ATD4082 Dead Blow Hammer and give the retainers on all of the valves a good hard hit. This will help break the keepers loose and make removal of the keepers much easier.
- You will next have to install an adapter from a compression tester into the spark plug hole of one of the cylinders. If you don’t have a spark plug adapter this ATD5639 Compression Tester Kit contains many popular sizes.
- With the proper adapter in the spark plug hole, you will now want to connect your air hose from your air compressor. I recommend using at least 100 pounds of shop air. This is used to keep the valves from falling into the cylinder when you remove the retainer.
- You are now ready to remove the retainer. You will need a tool such as this KDT3271 Valve Spring Compressor to compress the valve spring. This tool is simple to use simply latch the long arms onto the bottom of the spring and make sure the inside contacts the retainer. Then snug it up and thread the handle on top and compress the spring. Compress the spring until you can remove the keepers. I recommend using a little magnet such as this LIS31000 Magnetic Pick Up Tool to remove the keepers.
- With the keepers removed you can unscrew the valve spring compressor and remove it. Unless you have an o-ring style seal then you will need to remove the seal before you can remove the retainer. Then if you have an o-ring seal you can simply oil your new o-ring and slide it in place and install new keepers. It is important that you install new keepers. You can now pull the retainer off and set it aside along with the valve spring.
- You will then have to remove the umbrella or positive style seal. Install the new seal making sure to lubricate it with oil.
- With the new valve seal in place you can reinstall your valve spring and retainer, use the spring compressor and compress the spring. Install new keepers in the grooves and remove the compressor.
- Move onto the next valve and do the same procedure. Make sure you have air in the cylinder when you are doing this otherwise the valves will fall into the cylinder and you will have to remove the head to get them out.
- Before installing the rockers go around and hit each valve retainer with your soft faced hammer several times. This will make sure that all of the keepers are in place and insure that you will not drop a valve.
- Once all of the valve seals are installed you are ready to reinstall your rocker arms. If you have a rocker shaft you simply have to install the rocker shaft and torque it to spec. You may then have to adjust the valves depending on your setup. It is a good idea to get some information on how to adjust the lash on your rocker arms if you need to. If you have rocker arms and hydraulic lifters then you will want to set the rockers on and just start the nut. Then turn the engine until cylinder number one is on top dead center compression stroke. To make sure you are on compression and not exhaust since the marks will line up for both make sure both your push rods are down indicating a cam that has lobes facing away. Then if you have a manual it will tell you what cylinders and valves you can adjust the lash on with cylinder number one on compression. You will have to torque the retainers to a certain torque, and then according to the service information you may have to make a certain number of additional turns after that. Just make sure to follow the service information on this.
- You then simply have to install new gaskets on the valve cover and intake manifold and reinstall everything in the reverse order.
You just finished installing new valve guide seals. Your engine should now run much better and not use oil.
Written by: Cody Mammenga an NDSCS Student
Tags: ATD, kd tools, kdt, keepers, lis, lisle, retainers, seal, Tools, valve adjustment, valve guide, valve guide seal, valve seal, valve seals, valve spring, valves, vavle guide seals, vavle lash
