New Cruiser: Valve Guide Seal Quick Swap DIY (1 Viewer)

[lelandEOD]

For those who might be interested I thought I would document the my process to swap the valve guide seals in situ.
A little background: I just picked up this truck about a month ago and although it passed a combustion leak test and the compression and leakdown numbers looked pretty good, it was suffering from a significant blue cloud of smoke on cold start. I decided since I’m not entirely sure where I wanna go with the engine I just needed to buy myself some time. To that end, I decided to swap the valve stem seals with the head in place and see if that corrected the problem.

The process to strip the valve train has been well documented so I’ll skip to the point where the camshafts have been removed.

I decided to start with cylinder 1 since it’s the easiest to manage. I put a 30 mm socket and breaker bar on the crankshaft nut to keep the engine from spinning and used a Snap-On leak down tester to charge the cylinder with 120 pounds. Then, all I had to do was whack my valve spring removal tool and the valve spring assembly came apart flawlessly.

Here’s where things begin to get a little interesting. I first had to form my own valve stem seal removal tool since I couldn’t find anything on the shelf in any of my local parts stores. I took an old screwdriver and, using a MAP torch, bent the tip over to 90°. I shaped it with a flapper disk to the correct size needed to drop it into the valve spring bore and slip the tip underneath the edge of the seal assembly.

Every single one of the valve seal were completely degraded and the rubber had turned into some sort of brittle plastic. I carefully worked each seal off of the guide and began playing Operation with tweezers to pick out all of the residual fragments left behind.

 

[lelandEOD]

This was tedious and time-consuming as I think I spent at least 10 minutes on each bore.
Then, I dabbed a bit of fresh motor oil around the seal mouth and dropped the new ones on. I found suitable deep well sockets that fit the diameter of the exhaust and intake seals and gently tapped them into place with a mallet.

Then the process was largely just reassembling the valve spring assembly using the same tool used to take them apart.

 

[lelandEOD]

Bazang!

Rinse and repeat.

All in all, this is probably a two and a half banana job but I grossly underestimated how difficult it would be to reach some of those seals. Cylinder 6 was obviously a bear as it sits under the heater valve assembly. I was able to remove the heater valve from the firewall and gain enough access from behind to remove the valves using a brass drift.

Caution: you will need a sizable repertoire of curse-words and miscellaneous profane oaths in order to tackle this job. I also recommend blaring a playlist of prog metal to drown out your rage so the neighbors can’t hear.

A helper would’ve been a huge benefit as I had to get in and out of the truck probably 50 times to grab parts and tools which dramatically slowed me down and gave me one heck of a sore back. Another friend of mine later recommended a 2 x 10 resting between the fender tops as a belly board of sorts. I sure wish I had thought of that.
I ended up removing the entire air filter assembly to gain enough room on the inner passenger wheel well where I could sit in reasonable comfort and R&R each seal.

I’ve got the valve train reassembled at present but I’m waiting on an order of new seals to arrive as I discovered a couple problem areas as I tore down the valve assembly. Also, I took this time to reinforce a previous heat shield near the EGR valve with an additional heat resistant coating.

Last but not least, I thought it would be a good idea to check the headstud torque since they were readily accessible at this point.

I’ll update this thread once she’s back on the road and we will all see if this resolves my coldstart plume of smoke.

 

[jbee]

Love it. Great work. Interested to see the results!

 

[flintknapper]

Belly board is indispensable when working that far into the engine bay.

Also, if you KNOW you are going to do the job.....just get the correct tool for it before you start. Makes life easier.

Amazon product ASIN B00QWY2RM2

Glad you got yours all replaced. It WILL make a difference.

Excellent photos BTW

 

[JoeW]

Love this. I do valve seals in the car on MINIs all the time and am happy to see it's doable on the 80 series. Great job.

 

[lelandEOD]

A couple more notes for those who are thinking of taking up this project:

Lay out your new seals in a logical order and visually group them into appropriate sets for each of the six cylinders. Also, try to work in a logical and methodical order. I did both exhaust seals, then swapped over to the intake seals and worked from the valves closest to the firewall and moved forward. Just pick an order and stick to it to avoid forgetting where you left off. I also put a dot of sharpie marker on the lifter shim to give me a visual of which seals had been replaced to avoid confusion.

Also, I'm sure it's obvious, but only work on one valve assembly at a time. This way you cannot inadvertently mix up valve shims and everything must necessarily go back into its original position and in the same orientation as before.

 

[matzell]

More info on that tool to get the keepers off the valve and push the spring down please.

 

[flintknapper]

More info on that tool to get the keepers off the valve and push the spring down please.

It will be similar to this but there a different sizes and some work better than others.

Amazon product ASIN B000P0ZJIS

 

[lelandEOD]

It will be similar to this but there a different sizes and some work better than others.

Amazon product ASIN B000P0ZJIS

That is exactly the Tool I used and it worked like magic.

 

[cvenom96]

Can you reshare what the tool was? It shows up blank for me.

 

[george.arnold]

Can you reshare what the tool was? It shows up blank for me.

Amazon product ASIN B000P0ZJIS
If the link does not work, search for this on Amazon: Lisle 36200 Valve Keeper Remover and Installer , Black

 

[cvenom96]

Gotcha. I thought that looked like what you used but didn't know for sure. Weird, I see the link for a second and it disappears. Something screwy on my side.

Thanks!

 

[Andrew S]

@flintknapper , would you share what brand/model of pliers is shown in your photo removing the valve stem seals?

@lelandEOD , I have the same blue cloud on startups, along with ~2 quarts of oil consumption every 5000 miles. Did you also have high oil consumption prior to changing your valve stem seals? Has enough time passed to see if the new seals cured your issues?

Thanks to both of you!

 

[flintknapper]

@flintknapper , would you share what brand/model of pliers is shown in your photo removing the valve stem seals?

@lelandEOD , I have the same blue cloud on startups, along with ~2 quarts of oil consumption every 5000 miles. Did you also have high oil consumption prior to changing your valve stem seals? Has enough time passed to see if the new seals cured your issues?

Thanks to both of you!

Amazon product ASIN B00QWY2RM2

 

[lelandEOD]

@flintknapper , would you share what brand/model of pliers is shown in your photo removing the valve stem seals?

@lelandEOD , I have the same blue cloud on startups, along with ~2 quarts of oil consumption every 5000 miles. Did you also have high oil consumption prior to changing your valve stem seals? Has enough time passed to see if the new seals cured your issues?

Thanks to both of you!

I cannot speak to oil consumption prior to the repair because I only had the truck for about three weeks before I couldn’t stand the smoke on start and tackled this job. However, I can say with 100% certainty that swapping the seals has remedied the problem. I have not seen even a hint of oil smoke since swapping them.

 

[Pascoscout]

Interested in trying this. For someone who's not familiar with the process why do you have to charge the cylinder header with 120PSI before removing the valves?

 

[Rusty Marlin]

It prevents the valve from dropping into the cylinder when the keepers are pulled off the stem. You can also pull all the plugs, and slither about a mile of 1/4" clothes line into the cylinder through the spark plug hole on the one you are working on, (leave a tag sticking out!) then rotate the crank to bring the wad of line up tight to the bottom of the valves.

 

[Pascoscout]

It prevents the valve from dropping into the cylinder when the keepers are pulled off the stem. You can also pull all the plugs, and slither about a mile of 1/4" clothes line into the cylinder through the spark plug hole on the one you are working on, (leave a tag sticking out!) then rotate the crank to bring the wad of line up tight to the bottom of the valves.

Thanks! Charging with air seems easier. Assuming you have to keep an eye on it in case you have some leak down to prevent the pressure from dropping or are people just leaving it hooked up to the air source the whole time?

 

[flintknapper]

Thanks! Charging with air seems easier. Assuming you have to keep an eye on it in case you have some leak down to prevent the pressure from dropping or are people just leaving it hooked up to the air source the whole time?

You'd want to leave the air on....because you WILL have some amount of leak down. Also, bring the piston for each cylinder you are working on to the top of its stroke so IF you were to lose pressure the valves won't drop all the way down into the cylinder and there is less volume in the cylinder to fill with air pressure.