So my 01 Dakota QC 4.7L has been making clouds at stop lights. After 3 years of this im tired of it. Remedy? Valve guide seals. Shop cost from dealer is $1.50 each and there are 16 of them. Now if you want to, since the exhaust stroke is what pulls the oil, you can change the exhaust valve seals only...but whats the point. Ive already purchased the seals, and the valve cover gaskets. The hardest part of this was the special tool required to remove the rockers from the springs. The tool cost me $160 off a snap-on truck and its made by OTC. Now book time on this is 3 hours per side, but I can have the valve cover off on either side in 20 minutes. I plan on starting this project sometime later this week, probably thursday my day off. Seems silly to come up to work on my day off and work on my own truck, but thats the perk of working for a shop. Plus its nice to have shop resources at the ready. I will post pictures and a walkthrough for those DIY'ers like me. Any encouragement would be thanked. Ive takin my valve covers off 3 times now to attempt this only to discover the special tool I ordered is wrong. Now the one I have matches so we should be in luck. Without having actually performed this before, I know from ALLDATA you have to pull the covers, introduce compressed air into the combustion chamber to keep the valve up, use your tool to compress the spring, remove the rocker, spring, keepers, and old seal, replace new seal, install spring with keepers and replace rocker, release spring... done... makes it sound easy... I hope...

 

Would you mind sharing brand/part #'s for the tools that were wrong? That would keep the rest of us from repeating the mistake

 

as it turns out, its the same as the one for the fords. Let it slow down a little bit here at my shop and i'll post a picture of it.

 

Alright, wrong tool AGAIN!!! Good news is I think I can modify this one to make it work. Hopefully next week some time. Here is what I did today.