On my way home from the Garden of Angeles car show a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a noise coming from the engine. I could hear it while I was stopped, (like at a stop sign or stop light) and didn't think much of it at the time but once I was at home, that notion changed. While I was pulling down my driveway getting ready to put the car in the garage, I stopped the car, put it in park, stepped out and was getting ready to open the garage door when that small noise I heard earlier was much louder now. And anything that you can hear other than the sound of exhaust, isn't good.

I stood next to the engine (on the drivers side) trying to hear what it had to say and what it was telling me wasn't familiar. I pulled the car in the garage and shut if off but planned to mess with it the following day. Why the next day, because I was tired.

The next day was a Monday, which meant it was a work day and throughout the whole day, I was trying to find an answer to my problem before I went home (am I the only one that does this kind of thing at work?)

Once I was home, it was time to listen to the engine run again. After starting it up, I could hear it right away. I let it warm up for a couple of minutes and then stepped out of the car to take a closer look/listen. It didn't sound like a lifter but it didn't sound like a bearing either. I noticed it more at idle than at any other RPM. What the heck is it? At this point, it was time to break out the big dollar tools.

The tool of choice for this kind of thing was my trusty three foot length of heater hose. I've used this piece of tubing to listen to the pulse of a running engine many time before (like a doctor would use a stethoscope on a human). If you've never done this, you'd be surprised at what you can hear. By putting one end of the hose up to your ear and the other end up against different parts of the engine, you can pinpoint the area that a noise is coming from pretty easily. Some people use a piece of wood, like a broom handle to do the same thing, but I prefer the rubber hose over a stick (personal preference because either one will work).

After moving the business end of the hose around to a few places, the noise seemed to be coming from the middle of the engine (just a little louder than anywhere else), like the cam or lifters area. I could hear it at the valve cover too, but it seemed to be louder when I listened lower. But the one place it wasn't coming from, was the oil pan (thank goodness).

I shut off the engine and decided to let things cool down before working on it. My plan was to come home from work the next day and then begin the surgery.

Tuesday was even longer than the day before and I couldn't wait to get home to start in on my problem. Once I was in the garage, I removed the drivers side valve cover. My plan was to start out by checking the adjustment of all the valves. Now I've heard loose valves before but this didn't sound like that. As a matter of fact, I've never heard a noise like this before, so naturally I'm thinking the worst.

After checking the first three or four valves, they were within a couple of thousandths. Well that wasn't the problem but then again, I figured as much. On the other hand, I still have a few more to go so I was still hopeful that this would be the fix. While I was bumping the engine around to adjust the next rocker, I noticed something about the one I had just checked. What I saw was a contrast of color coming from the valve springs (I have double valve springs, inners and outers). I couldn't tell what I was looking at so I went to the toolbox and got a small screwdriver and flashlight to poke around with.

After poking around for a minute, I saw something that I've never had to deal with before. What I found was a broken inner valve spring. "What the hell"?? This was a first for me so now I was on the lookout for any thing else (that might catch my eye as I went through the rest of the valves). And wouldn't you know it, I found another on the same side. The first one was on the intake of cylinder number three and the second one was on the exhaust of number eight.

Now this was a good/bad situation because now I had a few questions run through my head. How long have they been broken? Which one was the one that I heard? And how come I didn't here the other earlier? Did they both break on the same day? I really doubt it. Now a bigger question that I started to think about was, if one of those springs had been broken while I whacked the throttle, did it do any damage to the cam or lifters? This last question was the one that I really needed to answer

Just a little history on roller cams, a solid roller cam is the one thing that you don't want to float a valve on because when a lifter leaves the cam lobe, it has to come back in contact with it at some point. This is the one thing that you don't EVER want to have happen to solid roller (like what I have) because it can destroy a cam or lifter in just a couple of hits. The lifters on a solid roller cam have a small wheel at the bottom which rolls on the cams surface. That small wheel has a bearing inside of it and they're designed to stay on the lobe of the camshaft. If the lifter ever leaves the cam's surface, the energy that is stored in the rotating cam will end up coming in contact with that small wheel at some point. On the lifters side, the remaining valve spring is probably on it's way back down to smack the cam, which will usually be the end of the lifter or the both of them. Some cams are more forgiving, like a hydraulic cam and lifters, but not a roller setup.

At this stage of my discovery, all I wanted to do was replace those two springs, button it all back up and then fire the engine to see if I could still hear a noise or not. I also told myself that all the springs would get replaced, because who knows when another might break.

The next day, I got on the phone with Dart and talked to a tech guy. After he heard my problem, he asked me a couple of questions. The first one he asked was, am I revving the engine really high? The second was, is the top end getting enough oil? I told him no and then yes respectfully. He also told me that sometimes the engine block that people use can be a problem. He then asked me who made the block that I'm using? I told him I was using one of his (a Dart block). That made him stop and regroup for a minute.

One thing lead to another with this guy and after he couldn't help me, I made one more call. This time it was to Isky Racing Cams (which is where I bought my cam from). After talking to the Isky guy, I ended up buying some new valve springs. These new springs were a little stronger than the others (more PSI) but were within a few pounds of what the heads came with when they were new. Now I needed a couple of tools that I didn't own to put these new springs on so I clicked my way to a hand operated valve spring compressor and a flexible air valve holder. Just to be on safe side, I also bought some intake manifold gaskets (in case I had cam or lifter damage) so I would be ahead of the game if I had to take that off.

A long week went by and finally all my stuff came in. Right after work on Friday, I went out and took things apart. I've never used a valve spring compressor that screws on a rocker stud before so this would be a new experience for me. I removed the spark plug on the # 3 cylinder and screwed in my new air valve holder. The flexible air valve holder is used to keep the valves from falling into the cylinder while you have the springs removed. What you do is connect an air line to one end of the air valve holder and the other end screws into the sparkplug hole. Now I've heard some horror stories about these units not working like they should. In other words, if this unit didn't keep the valve from coming out of the head, that would mean that I'd have to remove the head to retrieve the valve. Now this is the last thing that I'd want to do so I took one precaution, and that was to bring the piston up to top dead center before I screwed in the air valve holder. I thought that if the worst was to happen and the valve did fall, it would sit on the top of the piston leaving me enough of the valve stem to grab a hold of. It sounds good even if it wouldn't work!!

Here are the tools that I'll be working with. The valve spring compressor is a two piece unit. When I first unpacked it, I wondered why it was made this way but once I used it, I found it very handy. By having the handle removable, this lets you get in and work without it being in your way. It also works with two sizes of rocker studs, 3/8 and 7/16. Mine are the latter and to change it, you pull a pin and turn the threaded piece around. To use the air valve holder, all you add it is a quick disconnect to one end and your ready to go. The amount of air pressure they recommend is between 90 and 120 PSI. I let my compressor fill to the max.(150 PSI) and then put the air to it.
 

I then removed both rockers on that cylinder so I could screw on the spring compressor but right before I threaded that on, I used a dead-blow hammer to give the spring retainer a couple of light hits. These light hits make sure that the retainer clips don't stick to the valve tip when you compress your spring. 

The valve spring compressor took a little getting use to because you have to thread it onto the rocker stud just right. What I mean is, if you only use a couple of threads, it could come loose and wipe out the threads on your rocker stud under the load of the compressed spring. If you thread it on to far, it would be out of adjustment and not work properly, so It took me a few minutes to find the sweet spot.

Once I had the spring compressed, my mind could think of only one thing, "do this procedure as fast as I can". The reason that I was trip'n was because I had it in my mind that the valve was going to fall, (even if I looked at it sideways) so I hurried as fast as I could (that's how it went for the first one anyways).

This is what the inner valve spring looked like when I removed it from cylinder # 3. The top one is the outer (which is still in good shape) and the gold looking piece is my spring retainer. The other three pieces are my inner spring. How it broke like this I don't know, but there it is. And another thing that was needing to be replaced was my valve stem seals. As the spring bounced around, it chewed up the seal and it ground away on my spring retainer too. The spring retainer was easy to fix because all that was needed was a little deburring. As for the valve seals, that would have to wait because I didn't have any, but they would have to be replaced.
 

When I had both springs replaced, I knew that I would have to revisit this in a day or two, (once I bought some seals) but the one thing that really stuck in my mind was if that noise was still there or not.

As if I were in a race, I replaced those rocker arms and adjusted them in record time. The stud girdle went on just as quick and when the valve covers were bolted back down, the thoughts of pulling my intake manifold crossed my mind again. 

At this point, I went in the house to clean my hands before getting in the car. Once I was seated, I gave it one squirt of fuel and turned the key. The engine came to life and I was all ears. From where I was sitting, the engine sounded good but the real test would be getting out to let my ears determine the real outcome.

I let the motor warm up for a couple of minutes and when I was right next to the car, everything sounded fine. Hot damn, it worked!! I figured that noise I heard earlier was three pieces of valve spring bouncing around and transferring that noise down the valve train. I guess when that was happening, that made it seem like it was coming from the middle of the engine (the cam area).

This procedure took me about 2 1/2 hours to complete and now that it seems to be fixed, I was ready to take it for a test drive. And being that there just happened to be a car show in town that night, I thought this would be a nice short trip to check things out.

The test drive went great and the show wasn't too bad either but what I was really looking forward too, was getting back to work replacing the rest of those springs. Let's check out the new valve springs and how the procedure goes to change them.
 

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