With my finger now nearly grown back after the modifications I made to it last time, I could recommence battle in the garage. This morning’s job was a pretty straight forward affair – finish the stripping of the head. All that was left was removing the valves and the spark plugs because I’d forgotten about them.

Having not done valve removal before, I read the section in the Rod’s manual a few times. It was a bit confusing because they had to fabricate an extension to their valve spring compressor, where as the one I’d bought from machine mart was plenty big enough already.

With the head flipped onto its side I was ready to go. Turns out, I needn’t have worried – valve removal is a pretty simple affair, with just the collets being fiddly. If I think they’re fiddly now though, I expect I’m in for a whole world of pain when it comes to refitting them!

I removed the first valve and put the bits and bobs into my highly technical parts storing system.

I later found out that no only was I incapable to getting the numbers 1-8 down the length of the box, I was also unable to count all the way to 16. Oops! I popped the spring, retainer and collets into a sandwich bag and slotted the valve into the box. I also wrote the valve number on the carbon of the valve as extra security. It should brush right off when I clean the valve up for refitting.

With one valve done it was time to repeat ad finitum. Or 15 more times, but it felt like more. I got more confident with the valve spring compressor and was probably at a normal amateur speed by the time I got to the end.

Valve spring compressor

Collet removal

Eventually all the inlet valves were done

Flipped it over, remembering where number 9 now was and removed the exhaust valves.

Not that the above picture shows much more…
The only issue I have left is removing the valve stem seals. The manual suggests levering them out with a screwdriver but I didn’t get any joy with that. I’m going to run the head round a friends house – he has a seal removal tool and can show me how it’s done.

Quite enjoying this project, it’s nice to see how the engine works and hangs together. Well… used to!

Edit:
Have now visited said friend and stem seals removed. Easy when you have the right tools…

So that’s the head done, and if all goes to plan it’ll be the crank tomorrow.