Summary

This is a job that can be quite fiddly and there’s also potential for expensive damage if it isn’t done correctly. In this webinar we’ll take a look at the process along with some tricks and tips.

00:00 Hey team, Andre from High Performance Academy, welcome to another one of our webinars.
00:03 And this time we're going to be looking at the process of removing and installing valves, valve springs, retainers and locks.
00:10 And this is something that is more fiddly than it is complicated or truly difficult and you're going to get to see in just a few minutes just how fiddly and complicated that can be.
00:23 Always a challenge when we're doing these things live so pray for me, we're going to hope that this goes smoothly.
00:28 However, if it doesn't go smoothly, this will be a very accurate and realistic depiction of the process.
00:36 What I find, and I've talked about this in our engine building worked examples, is that the first one or two valves that you remove and install tends to be a bit fiddly, it's a bit tricky kind of figuring out the process and exactly how to use the equipment on a given cylinder head, in this case we're dealing with a Honda B18C but it's going to be the same for any head.
00:57 So, once you sort of get into the rhythm, you kind of figure out the process and it all starts to slot into place and go much more smoothly.
01:04 However, just be prepared that the first one or two can be a bit of an exercise in frustration.
01:10 Alright, so in order to remove or install the valve spring, what it requires is for us to compress that valve spring.
01:19 I have got the individual components here, I'll do these in front of our front camera, because we're already set up with a pretty tight shot on the side camera.
01:30 So, basically we have our valve here.
01:32 That gets inserted from the underside of the head and you'll see that happen shortly.
01:38 And then inside of the cylinder head, and I can't show you this, because we can't remove the valve seats from this head with the valve guides in place.
01:47 That will come up again later in a little sort of tips and tricks area, because it's something that you can end up getting in trouble with but we essentially have a valve spring base and that sits on the cylinder head and the reason for that is that it makes sure that we don't end up with the valve spring essentially wearing away or braiding away the aluminium cylinder head.
02:10 And then we have our valve guide seal and that seals around our valve guide and to our valve.
02:17 Really important to have that valve guide seal, otherwise you're going to end up with a smoke machine, because particularly under vacuum, when you're on overrun at high RPM, the vacuum in the cylinder is going to actually draw oil down the side of the valve guide or the valve stem and into the cylinder and then it's going to combust.
02:36 So, we want to make sure that we've got brand new valve guides when we're refreshing our engine.
02:42 Then we have our valve spring and that slots over our valve and it will seat on our valve seat and at the top we have our retainer and that sits on the top of the spring.
02:54 Now, again without a close up here, a little difficult to see but there is a little groove in the top of the valve and that little groove is used to locate, and I'll try and get these in place and then hold them up, a pair of locks or collets depending on who you are, where you are in the world and what you want to call them and basically they sit like that.
03:17 So, the idea with these, let's see if I can do this, is that they sit really nicely in a tapered groove or a tapered slot I should say in the retainer.
03:30 And the idea with that taper is that essentially as pressure's applied it tightens them up.
03:35 So, they can never come undone, they're basically held in place by the pressure of the valve spring, so that's the idea behind it.
03:42 And the problem with this is it does mean that when you are disassembling an engine that has been run, initially there can be quite a bit of resistance to actually break through or loosen those locks.
03:58 So, initially when we're trying to remove the valve springs, it can actually take a little bit of force to do that.
04:04 Alright, so that's the components that we're dealing with.
04:07 Obviously, it looks a little bit different for different engines and we might end up in a situation where we've got double or even triple valve springs but it all basically works the same and again we'll have some tips and tricks as we go through.
04:19 Should have mentioned, as usual we will have questions and answers at the end of this.
04:24 This is a relatively straightforward process, depending on how smoothly it goes for me, this might be a reasonably short webinar so keep those questions lined up and I'll give you a call for those when we are ready for them.
04:36 Alright, so in order to install or remove these valve springs, we're obviously going to need to compress the valve spring itself.
04:44 And there's a few ways of doing this and this has been traditionally one of the areas of frustration for me.
04:50 I've got a couple of tools here which I'm going to show you which we can do that job with.
04:55 We're going to start with this one here which I would call sort of a more traditional valve spring compressor.
05:03 This one is from SP Tools but a quick Google would probably find you a range of different options here.
05:09 So, this is universal and it's essentially adjustable to suit a range of cylinder heads.
05:15 We have this little part here which is what ends up clamping down onto the retainer.
05:22 We can see that it's hollowed out which means we've got access on either side which is going to be critical for both removing and installing the valve locks or collets.
05:31 It is sort of an over centre compression action.
05:36 One of the challenges with it is particularly with heavy duty race springs, it's a fairly physical process of actually compressing the spring so you work up a bit of a sweat by the end of it.
05:47 The other part that I find a little frustrating with these is basically figuring out how to adjust this, so that when we can first of all install it over the cylinder head without sort of ending up doing damage to the deck surface of the head, we don't obviously want to scratch that up.
06:06 But we also need to get it to a position where when we've actually compressed this, that we have the retainer compressed down far enough that we can remove and install the locks without going too far.
06:20 This one here as well, you'll be difficult to see the action, but to make matters a little worse, as I compress this down, first of all this part here compresses, it moves together, but as we get to the over centre part, it's at its maximum travel about now, as I go further, it actually comes back a little bit.
06:40 So, it's quite fiddly to use, particularly when we go to install the valve spring, because the retainer will move down away from the locks before it moves back up.
06:50 And I've found numerous times that can actually unseat the locks.
06:55 So, this one, bit of an exercise in frustration, reasonably affordable, I think these are probably about maybe under $100 USD or there or thereabouts.
07:04 The other tip that I would give you when you're looking or shopping for one of these valve spring compressors is the little cup that actually goes over the retainer.
07:13 A lot of these will be designed for push rod engines which have obviously much larger valves and generally much larger retainers.
07:23 And a lot of the ones that are designed for that style of engine, while obviously perfectly suited to that engine, are not great with the Japanese or basically any multivalve engine like this where the retainer size is much smaller, because we're trying to fit now four valves per cylinder instead of two.
07:43 So, yeah just watch the size of that, make sure it is going to be suitable for your particular engine.
07:49 Now, I'm not going to talk about that one anymore and I'm definitely not going to demonstrate it, because as I mentioned, that one is tricky.
07:55 This one here is possibly my newest most favourite tool and this is actually made by a company here in New Zealand called Hughes Race Built.
08:04 We've had Tom from Hughes Race Built on our tune in podcast and we're not sponsored by him, full disclosure, he did give us a range of these tools, but I use what I like and this thing is just so incredibly easy to use in comparison to the one that I just showed you.
08:25 It's really designed from the outset to work on multivalve engines as well.
08:29 So, you can see that little cup is smaller in diameter than the one I just showed you and it's giving us really good access to get to those locks.
08:39 We can adjust this one as well but generally with this one I find that's not necessary so much and what we can also do is pair this with a little 1¼ inch drive, well this is 3 eighths down to ¼ inch and makes the whole process just much much easier.
09:00 So, just because I do like that product, if we jump across to my laptop screen, you can check out HughesRaceBuilt.com and that particular unit, significantly more expensive but if you are building a lot of engines, I would 100% guarantee that this will pay for itself just under $340 USD and it does come with a range of other components here as well.
09:26 Particularly the tweezers which we'll talk about as we go, are quite useful.
09:31 Alright so, there are, I should probably for full disclosure, there are a range of other options, there are a few valve spring compressors that actually can be used with the head in place on the engine and typically they will bolt to the cam caps or something of that nature, basically some surface in the engine and hold down tight to the cylinder head and then you can compress the valves in place.
09:56 So, if you're thinking why on earth would I need to do this with the cylinder head in place, this would be quite common if you're performing a cam upgrade on a stock engine.
10:06 Typically when we perform a cam upgrade, we do need to fit a heavy duty valve spring that is suited to that particular cam profile and in those instances, it's going to save a huge amount of time and money if we can replace the valve springs without actually having to remove the cylinder head or cylinder heads from the engine and then reinstall them.
10:28 But basically the process is mostly the same as what you're going to see today anyway.
10:34 Alright so, next we'll just talk about some of the things that you need to watch out for.
10:42 Most of these are pretty self explanatory but it's worth just spending a little time dwelling on them anyway.
10:48 The first thing when we are actually, this is more about the installation process.
10:52 We're going to be hopefully starting with a freshly cleaned cylinder head and all of our parts will have been cleaned as well, ready to go.
11:00 Very very easy if you're new to this to overlook the installation of the valve seat.
11:07 And that's obviously going to be potentially catastrophic, as I mentioned before, that valve seat is there, so that our valve doesn't sort of erode away the aluminium of the cylinder head.
11:19 It also has a knock on effect though, because the valve spring has a thickness, it's not great, but it has a thickness, it has the effect of changing the installed height of the valve spring.
11:30 Which the installed height of the valve spring is simply the height from the top of the valve spring when it's installed in the cylinder head.
11:37 Why that's important is that metric basically defines the seat pressure that the valve spring will provide which in turn also defines what the pressure over the nose, which is when the cam is at maximum lift will be.
11:51 And those two spring pressures are critical, because these need to be chosen to suit the camshaft.
11:58 So, what I'm saying here is if you don't have that valve seat installed, you're going to have two problems, you're not going to have enough spring pressure.
12:04 Whether or not that causes an issue, that's up for debate and it depends how close to the edge you're running, but also then the erosion of your cylinder head which is definitely not something we want to end up having problems with.
12:17 The next one which I've kind of already alluded to is depending on the design of your cylinder head, quite often you will not be able to install and remove the valve seats when our valve guide seals are installed.
12:29 And I have had more than one occasion where I've gone through and happily installed a set of valve guide seals, then gone to install the valve seats and realised that with that particular head, that's not possible.
12:43 Which is pretty frustrating.
12:45 First of all, valve guide seals are usually a one use item so in order to remove them, you're going to damage them so you're going to have to replace the valve guide seal, there's a cost for that.
12:57 Usually, the bigger problem is actually the timeframe, if it's going to take another day or two to get a new set of valve guide seals, it delays your whole build.
13:05 So, really important up front to just have a good understanding of the process of installation and removal, what you can and can't do with your particular cylinder head and of course the workshop manual is going to detail all of that out for you, so there is no guesswork.
13:22 Now, the other thing with that as well, when you are dealing, in terms of installed high lit valve springs, when you are dealing with aftermarket valve springs, this is something you need to check.
13:34 We believe in the trust but verify process here at HPA and it's very easy to buy a set of aftermarket valve springs and just assume that if we install them straight out of the box with either our existing spring seat or if they're supplied with a new valve spring seat that we're golden and there's nothing more to do.
13:53 But again as I mentioned, we're only going to achieve the correct spring pressures if the installed height is correct.
13:58 Now, on one scale which I've talked about, one end of the scale which I've talked about, if we don't have enough spring pressure, we risk losing control of the valve train, basically having valve float which is not going to end well.
14:12 The other end of the spectrum, if we have the valve spring installed and it's basically too compressed, we may run into a problem where we actually reach coil bind before we get to peak lift and that can be very damaging very quickly.
14:27 So, we need to make sure that our installed height of our valve spring is correct.
14:32 A little outside of the scope of what we're talking about today, but generally to increase the, or reduce I suppose you'd say the installed height, basically what we need to do is fit shims or packers underneath the valve seat and we can do that in order to get the valve spring into the correct operating range of its installed height.
14:53 We also want to make sure that both the spring seat and the retainer match the valve spring or springs that we're using.
15:02 Now, if you're using a direct fit aftermarket valve spring, most often these are going to come supplied with a retainer to suit.
15:10 So, you just need to make sure that basically everything is lining up correctly and locating, I'll try and just grab this off and show you.
15:19 Again, I can't use the other angle camera so it's a bit harder to show detail but we've got steps on this retainer and basically those steps mean that we've got a nice positive fit on the valve.
15:31 This becomes more of an issue if you're starting to operate with double valve because they need to positively locate the inner, as well as the outer valve spring and as I mentioned that goes for the base.
15:43 So, can get yourself into problems there if the components that you're using are not matched.
15:48 Obviously, in a factory application this is not a consideration, everything should match.
15:52 The other thing that is worth mentioning here is the lock angle and the retainer.
16:00 So, if we jump across to my laptop screen, the industry standard here seems to be 7° which we can see, so that's the angle which I've been talking about through here.
16:10 And as you can see from that, or hopefully can understand, if our valve spring is putting force back up this way, we end up with everything becoming tighter.
16:20 So, these just don't move, they're not going to budge once they are installed.
16:25 But there have been instances or I've heard of instances where people have installed non match retainer and locks and if that angle doesn't match exactly, it will never lock up properly and if you get into a situation where you've got a little bit of valve bounce or valve float or something like that, that could be enough to cause a pretty catastrophic failure.
16:48 So, again just something to keep in mind although personally in my own experience, that has not been an issue.
16:53 Last thing I'll mention here is just while we're working with a cylinder head, any time we've got it off the engine, we always want to protect the deck surface which is obviously facing away from the camera at the moment.
17:05 Essentially if we've just had everything machined or even if it's just come apart and everything's in good condition, we want to ensure that we don't risk getting scratches on that surface.
17:16 That could result in combustion leaks and head gasket sealing problems or coolant or oil leaks so very very important that we take care of that.
17:25 Usually, when I'm working with a cylinder head, I've got a soft mat that I put down on my workbench, just meaning that if I do happen to put the head down on that deck surface, it's not going to end up with any risk of damage.
17:39 Alright so, with a bit of an understanding of what we're trying to achieve out of the way, let's have a look at the process of removing the valve.
17:48 Because before we can install it, clearly we need to remove it.
17:51 So, what I'm going to do here is just install the valve spring compressor.
17:56 At the moment I'm just going to, probably shouldn't have wound this away so far, just going to get this basically to a point where it's contacting on the retainer.
18:04 And we'll talk about what we're trying to do here once I've got that done.
18:09 So, we don't need our impact driver at the moment.
18:13 And, just about got that in location there.
18:19 Ok so, if we can pop to our side view at the moment, what I'm trying to do when I'm installing this is I'm making sure that the cup is pretty close to central on our retainer.
18:33 And this is just going to mean that A, we've got a lot of clean access around the locks, and B, it's also going to mean that when we pull down on this, when we compress it, everything's going to compress nice and straight, it's not going to pull in a funny angle.
18:49 The other end of this, which obviously now you can't see, has a nice sort of rounded cup and that tends to locate really nicely by itself kind of central in the bottom of the valve.
19:01 One tip when you are installing this, and again this comes back to protecting the deck surface of the head, just as we slot this on and off, we just want to make sure that we're not going to scratch that across that deck surface.
19:12 Now, one thing I'll just point out with this, complete polar opposite to what I just mentioned with that little cup, this one here, it's not sort of a bullnose so it doesn't naturally find a central location in the valve.
19:26 And what I've found with this time and time again is you'll get into a situation where it doesn't want to sit quite straight and it kind of will cock over and move and then it won't sit square on the head and then it won't sit by itself and it requires quite a lot of fettling and manipulating to kind of get it to sit exactly like what I've got here.
19:46 So, again this has just simplified my life dramatically.
19:50 Alright so, what I'll do now is we'll take our impact driver and we'll just locate this into our valve spring compressor.
19:57 Just while I'm doing this, I want to watch, it doesn't require a lot of effort here, and we just want to basically compress that enough, in this case the two locks have actually just fallen out by themselves, that's not always going to be the way but we want to compress it enough that we can extract those locks, but not so much that we risk sort of firing the retainer into the top of the valve guide seal, because that could end up damaging the seal itself if we're going to reuse those.
20:23 So, just essentially the bare minimum, you'll get a feel for this once you're used to it.
20:27 If you can't get those locks out easily, it's not enough.
20:31 It does tend to become more of an issue around the reinstallation though, because if we don't go on far enough it becomes really fiddly to try and get those locks installed.
20:41 Alright so, now we can remove the locks and there's a couple of ways we can do that.
20:47 We can just use something like this here, a pair of tweezers to get them out.
20:53 I find the easiest way is just a magnetic stick.
20:57 They are a steel component, so they're easy to extract and I'll try and get my head out of the camera here and essentially we can just get those out pretty easily with our magnet job done there.
21:11 So, now it's just a case of backing off our valve spring compressor and again we'll just do that nice and gently, we don't want our parts flying everywhere.
21:21 And again just making sure that we've removed or wound it back far enough that again we're not going to scratch across that surface of our head.
21:33 So, now our components should be pretty easy to lift out by hand and then, this is actually a double valve spring here, we can then push the valve down through the guide and out the bottom.
21:48 So, that's the process of removing, that's the easier part of the process.
21:52 Hopefully, I've talked this up enough now that the installation's going to go absolutely smoothly.
21:58 This is probably going to be the last part of our demonstration, so now if you've got any questions, is a great time to add them into the chat, we'll get into those hopefully in a couple of minutes.
22:09 Just a little tip here as well.
22:12 What I'm going to do, you'll see me use this as we're installing the locks, I've just got a small flat blade screwdriver.
22:20 Typically you're going to always have a range of these in the workshop in different sizes.
22:25 Small flat blade screwdriver works quite well.
22:28 It's really handy if it's magnetic as well, so that it will actually pick up the locks, this one is not.
22:37 And what we can do in order to magnetise a screwdriver that is not magnetic is take our little magnet here and we can just rub that down the surface, always starting at the top and moving down.
22:50 And that will actually magnetise the screwdriver.
22:53 Hopefully this demonstration works as well.
22:55 And that's going to again just make it helpful for us to actually be able to support those locks while we're trying to manipulate them into place.
23:04 The other thing that I use in conjunction with this, which you'll see as well, is that I also use some engine assembly lube and that is used for two purposes.
23:13 First of all, I'll put some of the engine assembly lube on the inside surface of the lock and that's just going to help, once I've actually got it installed into the groove in the valve stem, it's going to help it stay there.
23:26 And then by using a little bit of lube on the outside of the collet, that again, just with the magnetism which did work, you can see I wasn't making it up with no magnetic screwdriver, that will just help hold it in place.
23:39 Generally, you can find that it's helpful to also have another tool that's not magnetic such as I've got this little pick here and I've obviously got the tweezers.
23:51 Because once you've got these in place, sometimes the magnetism of the screwdriver will also want to pull it off the valve.
24:00 So, it can be helpful to use another hand and just sort of hold the collet in place, hold the lock in place while we remove our screwdriver.
24:06 Alright so, let's get our valve installed for a start, back where it's just come out of.
24:12 And when we're doing this as well, I don't actually have my little oiling can here.
24:17 When we're assembling this for the final time, I'll always use my can of fresh mineral based engine oil and I'll just apply a small amount of engine oil to the valve seat as well as the valve stem itself.
24:31 So, that's just going to lubricate everything up the valve guide as we're installing it, as well as the valve seal.
24:37 So, in this instance, as already discussed, we can't remove that valve spring seat with the guide seal in place so those are already there, that's a given, we know that that's not a problem.
24:48 And then we can take our retainer and our spring and again we know these are all parts that work together, but we always just want to check the fit of the retainer onto our valve spring.
25:00 And then what we'll do is we'll just drop that into location.
25:03 Now, because our head is also standing up on an angle, the valve spring itself is going to want to sort of fall and that can require, depending on the height of the valve spring, can require a bit of manipulation as we go and fit our valve spring compressor.
25:20 In some instances if we're careful, what we'll find is that we can actually just locate the retainer on the valve itself and that will sort of hold it in place.
25:31 These ones are a little bit long so it actually does sort of sit a little bit like that at the moment.
25:35 That is however just fine.
25:37 Let's get our valve spring compressor into place here.
25:43 And when we're doing this, because at the moment it's not sitting quite right, what we want to do is as we're winding this down by hand, we want to just make sure that our cup sits central on the retainer which I've already discussed.
25:56 And as we sort of start compressing it a little bit, we want to just make sure that we are going central over the valve, which we are.
26:06 Another little tip I'll give here is that while we've got almost no pressure, no compression on the valve spring at the moment, this is a really good time to manually rotate that cup and we'll cross over to our side camera here.
26:19 What I've done is I've just rotated this so this cut out here gives me really good access and we can see that we've still got, the retainer is still above the tip of the valve, but we're nice and central here.
26:31 We can see that that cup is nice and central on the retainer.
26:34 I can also just physically check that we're central on the other side, but like I've said, that kind of self centres so it's kind of a given.
26:42 We'll now take our impact driver and what I want to do here, it's very easy to sort of get a bit enthusiastic with this, but just a little bit of pressure, we can get a lot of control as to how much we're compressing it.
26:55 And again let's just jump across to our side camera.
26:59 And what we're looking for here, might be a little hard to see, it is a little hard to see I think but the point that I've just got the tip in here is the groove in the valve guide, the valve itself I should say.
27:10 And that gives me quite a bit of access here, so I know that I'm going to have enough room to install these locks.
27:17 Alright now the tricky bit, so let's see how well this goes.
27:21 So, this is the engine assembly lube that we use in house.
27:25 There'll be a range of them, I don't necessarily say one's better than the other.
27:29 This one is from a manufacturer called CRC here in New Zealand and it is a brand called Star Lube.
27:35 So, just a little bit of that lubricant onto the tip of my screwdriver here.
27:39 And then, going to be a little bit tricky to see but as I mentioned, I'm just going to use that to apply that to the inside diameter of that lock and then we'll just get that into place there.
27:53 Now, probably going to be a little hard to show this, because I'm probably going to have to lock this side camera, but what I'll do is I'll try and get this into place here and then we can have a better look hopefully once it's in place.
28:08 Ok so, it's actually gone in not too badly.
28:14 Yeah, probably is a little bit hard to actually see unfortunately, but we've got that into its location there and it's in the groove.
28:23 So, what I'm going to do here is just using this pick, I'm going to rotate it around to the far side, cos I can't get to the far side to install this next one.
28:33 And that's going to make room for the next one that we are going to install.
28:38 Now, once I've got this in place which I think I have now, I'll just talk about what I was doing there.
28:46 So, even with this particular valve spring compressor being much much higher in quality and much more concentric, it still will tend to pull the valve spring and the retainer in a given direction, because it's obviously got a bit of mass associated with it.
29:02 So, why that matters is that when I try and move the collet or lock around to the other side to give me access, naturally what's happening is that essentially the retainer will be kind of almost sitting on the valve at the top, because it's being pulled down.
29:21 So, sort of exaggerating it's going to be a little bit like that.
29:23 And what I was doing there was just manipulating the head of the valve spring compressor and by doing that I've sort of got the ability to move the retainer to actually make a bit of space.
29:34 So, I was sort of doing that while I was moving the lock around and the advantage of this is it lets me get the lock into the correct location so I can add the second one.
29:44 But it also means that, because I can apply a little bit of pressure to the back of that lock with the retainer while I'm doing it, it means it's not going to flick out of location while I'm doing so.
29:55 Alright so, we're halfway there, that actually went pretty smoothly, but famous last words, the wheels could still fall off at any moment.
30:02 We're now just going to repeat that process here with our second lock.
30:07 One other tip I should have given you here as well, if you are dealing with aftermarket valve springs, quite often these are going to be made out of a material that will suffer from what's referred to as hydrogen embrittlement.
30:22 Same goes for a lot of the high end head studs and main studs as well that we put into our engines and the reason that it's important to understand that is that these should absolutely not be touched with bare hands, the oils and acids from our hands can affect the valve spring material.
30:39 Typically, I will be doing this wearing a set of gloves, latex gloves, but hard to present a webinar while I'm wearing gloves.
30:48 Alright enough talk anyway, let's put off the inevitable as long as I can.
30:52 Let's see how this one goes.
30:54 So, again same process here, just going to feed that in from the opposite side, just using the tip of my finger there.
31:02 And I've just pushed that in, again this part's going to be a little hard to see.
31:07 So, I'm basically pushing it in, I want to just make sure that I'm comfortable that it has properly engaged into that groove in the valve.
31:16 And once I'm comfortable with that, now we've got the last part of the process which is to unwind or decompress our valve spring.
31:23 Trick while we're doing this, excuse me, is that again we can get the situation where the weight of the valve spring compressor means that we're not completely concentric with the valve as we're removing it.
31:37 And I've had a number of times, again more with the old style valve spring compressor than this, where as I'm decompressing the valve spring, it'll actually pull one of the locks off with it.
31:49 So, that's kind of an occupational hazard and something we want to be really careful of.
31:53 This one, as I say, generally less of an issue.
31:56 We still want to make sure that we are nice and central.
32:00 And just watching that process as we unwind the valve spring compressor, we will know if we got ourselves into any trouble there.
32:10 That actually went seamlessly so I'm glad I made such a big deal about how hard it is, because now it looks like it's not that hard.
32:17 Doesn't always go quite that smoothly.
32:21 Alright so, the final part here though, and this is probably the most important, is a thorough visual inspection to make sure that everything is sitting where it should.
32:32 So, this one you can see now from our side camera.
32:37 So, we've got both of our locks, the height of the locks versus the retainer, consistent on both sides, the height of the tip of the valve versus the retainer is what I'd expect.
32:47 Generally, I'll also try and align, you can't see it because I haven't got a gap on this side, when we've got our locks installed on the valve, generally we'll end up having a bit of a gap and I just try and align the two gaps so that they're equal, that again gives you a nice visual indication that everything is sitting in the right place.
33:08 There is a theory as well that if you do that and you have a gap on both sides of the locks and then when you come to disassemble the engine, if you find that they've moved and they're budding up on one side, that can be indicative that you've been suffering from valve bounce or valve float, basically some kind of valve motion issue.
33:26 Personally, I think probably at that point you're going to have other indications that you've got valve float anyway.
33:33 But that is the process of installing and removing valve springs.
33:37 One last thing I'd do once I've installed all of the valve springs is that I would turn the cylinder head over, support it on something, so that I can then go through and we'll tap the tip of each of the valves and just basically pop the valve open a millimetre or so and that will just ensure that everything is nicely seated ready for our startup.
33:56 Alright, we'll jump into questions and see if we've got any.
34:01 And it would appear that we haven't.
34:04 So, obviously I've done an amazing job of explaining that.
34:07 It isn't the most complicated job, all it requires is an understanding of the process, the correct tools and then as I've mentioned, a little bit of patience and perseverance.
34:19 If you do have questions after this webinar has aired, you're always welcome to ask those in the forum and I'll be happy to answer them there.
34:26 Thanks for watching and hopefully we can see you next time.