Good morning,

I am replacing my valve seals on my 85. A friend who is a mechanic is helping me do it at home. I have been told that you do not need to pull the heads for this operation. He says that I will need to pump up each cylinder with air from an air compressor to keep the valves from falling in the cylinder after the keepers and springs are removed. Is this the best way to do this job? If so, it sounds very time consuming. I guess what I am asking is has anyone done this and are there things that the first timer would need to look out for? How difficult is this job? Any pointers will be apreciated. thanks. Oh yeah, will I need to adjust the valves after the seals are replaced and everything has been put back together on the valve train?

 

Yes the job is time consuming, but not as much so as pulling the heads for a valve job. Also, what kind of seals are you installing? Chevy has o-ring seals on the valve stems. Replace valve seals is usually a stop gap measure as the real problem usually lies in valve guide wear. You need to also install "umbrella seals" first, seals that are a cup shape and made of rubber, not the cheap plastic ones. These seals slide down over the valve guide boss and have a metal clip around the base. The rubber ones last much longer than the cheaper plastic ones. Then, put your spring, retainer and keeper on after you have the spring depressed, install your o-ring seals. Depressing valve springs can be cumbersome towards the rear of the engine. Good Luck! [8D]

"will I need to adjust the valves after the seals are replaced and everything has been put back together on the valve train? "

Yes you will since you are backing off adjusting nut to remove rocker arm to gain access to valve and spring.

 

I'll be replacing o rings and umbrella seals. i'll also make sure to get the good rubber seals. The car smokes for a few seconds after a cold start. Nothing really bad. i don't lose much oil between oil changes. I've just spent so much money replacing worn items that I feel that I should do this too. I might wait to do it until spring. thanks for the pointers. I have my mechanic friend helping me so it should go smoothly.

 

Good luck, hope all goes well.

 

Sounds like everyone covered everything pretty well. I can only add to make sure you place a nice light colored rag in the head so if you drop a keeper you can find it rightaway and to keep anything from finding its way down into the engine. nothing will spoil your day more than to see a keeper fall into a oil return hole in the head. Also use the spring compressor that clips onto the spring and turns a **** to compress the spring. Afriend did it with the "lever" type and when he pushed down on a valve he broke the seal and allmost lost a valve into the cylinder.

 

thanks for the responses everyone. Like I said, I think I'll hold off until spring because it's not a major problem right now. It just bugs me when someone comes up and says something like "hey, your car smokes". These comments are usually coming from some nimrod that doesn't know much about cars though.