Tweaking and adjusting the 33 Ford Coupe

While I was waiting for the valve stem seals to come in, I started in on the other side because I didn't find any broken springs over there (broken springs = torn-up valve seals). After removing all the rockers and sparkplugs, I was ready to get to work. Now one of the things I found out was, if you take out all four sparkplugs (because they had to come out eventually) and then connect the air line, the air pressure was a little greater than what the engine could hold. What I mean is, the motor rotated once I plugged in the air line. Like I said earlier, this procedure is new to me so to make sure the piston stays at top dead center, I put three of the sparkplugs back in. That made it harder to turn the motor over and now I was back in business.

The new valve springs that I'll be using are the Endurance 9000's, made by Iskenderian. These are a dual spring design (like my others) but they also have a damper in them. The damper is there to reduce spring harmonics and is placed between the two springs. It looks like a spring in it self (because it's coiled up) but instead of being round like the coils of the springs, they are made out of thin flat stock. The spring material is a chrome-silicon mix and they measure the same as my old ones at 1.550" O.D. The seat pressure is 210 lbs. @ 1.900" (vs. 195 lbs. for my old ones at the same height) and the open pressure is 520 lbs. @ 1.240". This stronger spring should be fine, even though it has a little heavier pound rating. And if anything, springs don't get stronger with time, they get weaker.

Here is my fancy work area. I used a plastic storage bin for one of my work benches, and my seat with wheels for the other. It doesn't get any more high class than that! Now because the engine sits so low, it was easier to be on my knees instead of standing (notice the towel on the ground). This worked out pretty good but took it's toll on my back (it's hell get'n old).

If you look close, you can see my remote starter switch hanging from my hood support. This made it easy to bump the motor around to get the pistons at top dead center and I used it to adjust the valves too.

One of the hardest things I encountered was to replace the valve spring retainer clips because of the limited space you have to work with. To help me remove the retainer clips, I used a magnetic wand that swivels. It worked great for this kind of thing.

Here you can see the valve spring compressor screwed onto the rocker stud. The part of the compressor that comes in contact with the spring retainer is adjustable. After finding the sweet spot that worked for me, I locked down the jam nut to keep it from moving. Also notice the rag along the back of the head. This was just a precaution in case a spring got loose and flew across the garage. It wasn't meant to catch the spring, it was meant to keep the retainer clips from going into the oil drain back holes. Hey, you can never be too careful.

At this point, I'm ready to compress the spring. Once the handle is pushed down, it locks into place allowing you to remove the retainer clips and then release the tension on the spring so you can remove it. This is where the nerve racking part comes in because the only thing holding the valve up, is air.

This should give you a better idea of how the compressor works. Once you have the spring removed, you can then take off the handle and swing the compressor out of the way. This allows you to remove the spring and inspect the valve stem seals.

There was good news and bad news on this side of the engine. For the good news, every valve stem seal was in good shape. The bad news, I found two more broken inner springs. Now this shocked me because when I was adjusting the valves the other day, I was looking for more broken ones. But the two new ones that I found on this side didn't break like the others did. What I found was that the very last coil had broke off of each spring. I guess with only one coil broken, the rest of the spring was still riding on it, (appearing to be in one piece) but once I removed the spring, things were different. I figure the reason why either seal didn't get wiped out was because the broken part of the spring was being trapped in two directions. The first, the broken part was under the spring never touching the valve seal just above it, and second, it was being held by the valve guide so it couldn't go side-to-side. The valve seal rides on the valve stem and over the valve guide, but not all the way down to the heads surface. That small spot that the seal doesn't touch is where the broken spring was at. At least that's my thoughts on the matter.

With the old spring out of the way, you replace that one with a new one along with the spring retainer. That's the easy part because now it's time to replace the clips. The opening in the retainer (where the clips go) and the valve stem has to be equal for both of the clips to fit. If it's not equal, only one will fit. This is where I found out how to work with the handle (which I moved from side to side) in order to get both clips installed. Sometimes I would have to remove the clips, release the spring and then recompress the spring because I had the spring compressor off center. When that would happen and I only had one clip in place, I'd take my magnet, remove the clip and start all over. This happened a few times but all you can do is take a deep breath and get back to it.

This tool worked pretty good for a quick spring change (that doesn't require you to remove the heads) and it was easy to use, once I got use to it. There were times that I had to remove the push-rod because the back of the compressor would sometimes hit it. The reason for this was because of the position of the cam. Some lobes would be up and others would be down. Depending on which way they were would determine if I removed the push-rod or not.

Let's take a look at the side that needs the new seals.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14