I've put valves in heads beforemost notably V8s but never on a sohc Neon where the spaces are tight, I have a few quetions regaurdingreplacing valve seals.

The first is.. Do I need a specialvalve spring compressor or will a regular one work? It looks rather tight inside there for a normal spirng compressor.

The secondis can I put each cylinder I'm working onat top dead center and let the valves drop on the piston andtake thevalve springs out without using compressed air tokeep the valves afloat?

Thanks very much.

 

you will need to use an overhead valve spring compressor....a regular spring compressor wont work unless you make a few modifications like i did to mine

 

Yes you can drop the valves on the piston but dont turn the engine cuz you will get big problem as you know :P

 

It wont be a problem, the night I was supposed to change the valve seals it rained and so I put the car down off the jack and I had just got done draining the oil and so I called it a night. A few hours later I went to bed and my wife took the car in the morning and blew the motor cuz I was too tired to tell her it wasn't done

 

sounds like a good deal[X(]

 

I have the same problem with you JackMehoffer69. It’s a good thing that you open up that situation. It’s been a long time that I was looking for an answer with that question. This coming weekend I will ask some auto advice to automotive technician to get more idea about car parts.

 

ok since there seems to be some confuesion about this I'll try to sum it up as easy as i can...

Like spud said there has to be some modifications done to the valve spring compressor...

I have seen people that also will take a deep well socket that fits on the retainer and cut a window on the bottom allowing someone to get the retainer off... and they just put the deep socket onto the retainer and use the spring compressor to push down on the socket...

So the answer is yes you can however getting gunked up valve stem seals out of a head from up top is a difficult task... I would try running some seafoam threw the motor first to loosen the sludge on the valve seals...

Sorry about the motor jackmeoff... god i feel dirty every time i type your name... lol