1935 Ford Pickup: Tear it down ..... Again!

Decided to take the heads back off to see if I can fix the smoke issue. I noticed burnt oil running down the right side muffler and some water build up on the back side of the engine. That compiled with the smoking from the tail pipes .... I have had enough! So I tore the engine back down.

Yesterday, I took the alternator, belt, carb and intake off and removed the valve covers and rocker assemblies and pulled the right side head. I cleaned it up good and took off all of the old gasket. I plan on putting the heavy duty metal gasket back on it. I cleaned up the original gaskets and put the head back on. This was a bit tedious as the water pump can not move since it is connected to the front motor mount and supports the engine. I had to put gasket maker on the gasket and stick it to the water pump port and then maneuver the head on without messing that up. Got it on and firmed up the head bolts. Quit for the night.

This morning I decided to locate the valve seals that came with the engine gasket set and give that a try as long as I had the engine apart. Having never done seals before I thought that I was missing 8 seals, but it seems I just need them for the intake valves and not the exhaust valves. This is good news! All I needed was a valve spring compressor tool. Off to the parts store ......

Picked up the tool and a lapping tool with lapping compound as well as some gasket material and gasket maker. I also got a fine wire wheel to clean things up a bit.

If money were no object, I would take the heads to a machine shop and have them rebuilt .. hell I would take the entire engine and have it done ...... well unfortunately I have to work with what I have.

So, I pulled the head back off and replaced the seals on 3 of the valves and cleaned up the valves and the area around them. I also lapped the valves as I went (Intake only so far). The first seal I did was pretty simple, the next one over would not break loose from the retaining clip so I shot it with PB buster and moved to the next one. This one came off easy enough but I had a heck of a time putting the "clip" back on! If you are not familiar with these Poly retainers, they are two pieces with 4 slots each that match up to four ribs on the valve. You put the 2 halves together in the groves and that completely encircles the stem ... you release the spring and it holds it on. I will get a picture of this tomorrow to better illustrate how it works.

The problem I was having is that the tool would not quite compress the spring enough to completely expose the retainer so I had to fiddle with it to get the 2 halves all the way down on the stem .... Again, pictures can show this better than I can explain it. I will ad those tomorrow.