How to replace valve seals?

Where do you get this adapter to put air in the cylinders? And is that the only way to hold the valves up?

The air chuck method is kind of iffy, because if you push the valve down at all, the cylinder loses compression and the valve falls in. If you don't have the piston at top dead center when the valve falls in, it might fall in so far that you have to take off the head to retrieve it. The other problem with air pressure is that it pushes on the top of the piston and can make the vehicle move, as well as push down a piston, which as I said, can open up a clearance that the valve can disappear into.

I am always suprised at how hard people make things on themselves. If you are going to replace your stem seals, get a clothesline, like a cloth or nylon rope. Take out your sparkplugs. Roll the engine around with a 21 mm socket on the crankshaft pulley to get cylinder 1-4 at bottom dead center. Feed rope into the sparkplug hole on 1 until you can't get anymore into the hole. Start rotating the crankshaft until it compresses the rope against the inside of the head, locking the valves shut. You can test this by trying to push the valve down a little. When it won't move at all, you can remove the springs on the valves on that cylinder and not even think that the valve is going to go anywhere. Replace the seal and respring the valve. Once you have one cylinder done, you repeat the process by putting a piston at BDC, feeding in rope, and then rotating the engine to compress it. The job will take as long as doing it with an air chuck would, but you won't have to pull a head if a valve falls in, because it won't and can't. Have fun.

^^^Cool, thanks a lot. One last thing, can I change the valve guides without taking the head off also? Figure if I'm in there I might as well do as much as I can.

Simple answer, no. A valve guide that is loose enough internally to need replacement is going to have already allowed enough valve rock to cause a loss of compression on a faulty cylinder. If a guide needs to be replaced, the head is usually due for major service, i.e valve seats reground. It also usually means if one is bad, more than one is bad.

^^Cool...thanks again for the quick response. Just valve seals it is then!

One other thing. You need to pull the rocker arms to get access to the valve springs. Get the rockers off before you start rotating the motor with the rope in it. There are ten cam hold down bolts which need to be loosened and pulled up, but only the front two need to be removed entirely, I think. The first cam holddwon stays on the head. Keep the bolts in the shafts if you can. It will help keep everything oriented. If you don't know what I am talking about now, when you get the valve cover off, you will.

I can't get the rockers to budge with that front hold down on(the one thats outside the valve cover). Theres a bolt coming in from the front into the hold down thats behind the cam pulley, do I have to pull the cam pulley to take that bolt out to get the rockers off? I tried getting to it through the holes in the pulley but that wasn't happening. Am I missing something?

It occurs to me that the rocker holddowns have inserts to line them up with the head. You are going to have to pull the bolts, and then slide the shafts back to remove them from the front cam hold down. Once they are free of the front holddown, the rest of them will lift straight up. You don't have to take out the bolt behind the cam pulley, the front holddown can stay where it is. There is a weird looking plate on the back of the head that the ground strap bolts to, and that needs to be removed as well. I didn't need to remove the front hold down to do my seals, but yon need to be careful pulling the shafts when the bolts are out, because springs can go flying everywhere, and make sure the shafts don't get reversed or unside down. You'll figure this out.

^^^Your faith inspires me...TO THE GARAGE!!! Seriously, thanks for your help.

The air line worked perfectly. None of the valves pushed down and leaked and at 20 psi. The rope to me is the touchy thing because you could get bits of it in there from scraping on the plug holes just a thought. And yes the air did rotate the engine, but that's why it was in neutral, the battery disconnected, and the wheels chocked. This also fixed the noise at startup because now there is acually oil on the top after sitting for hours.