I FINALLY got around to changing the valve seals on my pickup truck. I've been talking about doing it for a year or so and finally got up with a buddy of mine who has a shop air compressor and changed all of my valve seals. I've had a leaky one on cylinder 3 for the longest time that would cause a short puff of blue smoke on startup, and I've been talking about changing the valve seals for a year or so and finally got around to doing it. Also in the process of doing that, I tightened down on my rocker cap screws with a torque wrench set to the factory spec and that eliminated a slight "rattle" I've been hearing for the longest time that almost made the engine sound like a miniature diesel. You can hear it a little bit in this video I recorded a while back.


One of the push rods probably had a thousandth of an inch of slop where it disengaged the rocker and would then "smack" it when it came back up, and by tearing it all apart to replace the valve seals and re-torquing everything to the factory specs, I eliminated that small amount of play. I checked the rockers and push rods for any noticeable wear, and hooked up an air gun to the air compressor and shot air through them to make sure they were clear of obstacles, and everything looked OK, but apparently one of them had just enough play to make that slight noise. So in addition to stopping the oil burning, I also fixed another issue by virtue of what I had to take off to get to the valve seals.

I'm just really glad I got that one job out of the way before really cold weather hit, I was getting pretty tired of burning an extra quart of oil between oil changes. I would have taken pictures, but neither me or the guy whose shop I used had ever done it before, and I really didn't want to go taking pictures and videos of any screw ups that happened in the course of doing it for the first time. We ended up not having any issues except having to fanagle the little valve spring keepers back into position with an extendable magnet rod and an occasional dab of grease, which we expected because of the nature of how they work, but it was a really time consuming job (4-5 hours) and once I got elbow deep in my engine bay I didn't feel like digging out the camera to take pictures.

If anybody else is planning on changing their valve seals this way, here's two pointers.

1) The keepers on the valve springs might be seezed to the valve stem. Once you have the valve spring compressed as far as you can go, if it doesn't move independently of the valve stem, wiggle it left and right to break the keepers free. If you push too hard you could overcome the air pressure and let quite a bit of it out, which could cause the valve to fall down inside, so while you can push on the valve spring a little to try and break it free, try side to side motions instead.

2) Do NOT forget to move the air line over to the next spark plug hole when advancing to the next pair of valve stems, and don't forget to rotate the engine so that piston is at top dead center (basically the position at which the piston is as high as it goes before it starts the downward stroke) . If it's not at top dead center, the piston may move into the down position when you pressurize the air chamber which will give the valve enough room to fall down into the head if you do lose air pressure. By placing the piston at top dead center, even if the valve falls, you'll be able to reach it with a pair of needle nosed pliers and grab hold of the valve stem to retrieve it. If you lose air pressure and the piston is in the down position, you'll be removing the head to retrieve your valve.