Valve seal install

This is NOT the time to get aggressive. If for any reason it gets held up or stuck, then something is not right and you should abort what your doing. They should slide on to the valve guides with just minor force. If going through the trouble of changing out your valve stem seals Be sure to check out other articles here at enginebasics. Want to know more about your particular Make and Model vehicle? All of these vehicles are covered in the tech, maintenance and repair articles found above.

Enginebasics is the wiki or wikipedia of car part, repair, how to and tuning information. Let us be the class for your automotive learning. Below are just a few of the articles found here on enginebasics. Dynamic Compression Air to Air Vs. Special thanks to:. Info from every other site I looked at, only said how to do it using costly special tools. Thank you for showing the REAL easy way, and saving me some money. So much mis-information on forums, good to read some solid info.

For the latest Automotive news and stories visit the websites below. In the process of rebuilding some KLDE engine heads I have discovered the low cost options for valve seal installation tools are very poorly designed. They either do not have offer valve guide tolerance or they smash the valve seal during installation.

I have come up with a low cost option that allows for a perfect seal installation. All that is needed is an intake valve and this tool. We do offer the complete package of a used intake valve and tool. Click here to view past issues. Valve stem seals play a critical role in controlling valve lubrication as well as oil consumption.

If the seals do not fit properly or are not installed correctly, the guides may be either starved for lubrication or flooded with oil. Click Here to Read More Advertisement Seal longevity is another issue that should be considered when choosing replacement valve stem seals. The material from which the seals are made must be capable of withstanding the harsh operating environment inside the engine for an extended period of time not just the warranty period.

High operating temperatures cause lower grade materials such as nitrile to harden and become brittle over time. Eventually, this can lead to cracking, loss of oil control and seal failure. When a valve stem seal loses its ability to control the amount of oil that enters the guide, it can cause a variety of problems. The accumulation of heavy, oily carbon deposits on the backs of the intake valves may cause hesitation and performance problems in some fuel injected engines.

Increased oil consumption due to worn or leaky valve stem seals will also increase hydrocarbon HC emissions in the exhaust — which may cause a vehicle to fail an emissions test. Oil burning can also damage the catalytic converter because phosphorus in motor oil contaminates the catalyst. If oil is fouling the spark plugs, misfiring can cause HC emissions to soar as unburned fuel passes into the exhaust.

Advertisement The converter may overheat to the point where the substrate breaks down or melts creating a restriction or blockage in the exhaust. Debris from deteriorating seals is another concern that can cause additional problems inside an engine.

Pieces of the seal may clog oil passages starving lifters or rockers for lubrication. Debris may also end up in the crankcase where it may be sucked into the oil pickup screen creating an obstruction that causes a loss of oil pressure — and you know what that means! Nitrile is one of the least expensive materials, and has been used for many years in umbrella or deflector type seals for older pushrod engines.

Advertisement A step up from nitrile is polyacrylate. It is also used for some positive seals as well. Some engines such as older big block Chevy V8s have positive seals made of nylon. Nylon is impervious to oil, but it can melt if the engine overheats. Silicone is a good high-temperature material, but costs four to five times as much as nitrile. Advertisement In the mids, positive valve stem seals made of fluoroelastomer materials FKM and Viton began to appear in import and domestic overhead cam engines.

Viton has good flexibility like nitrile, which means it can handle some runout between the valve stem and guide. It is also considered to be a more durable material than silicone. Viton also has better wear resistance than most other seal materials, making it a good choice for applications where long term durability is a must. Like nylon, Teflon is a hard material so it cannot handle as much runout between the stem and guide as more flexible seal materials can.

Upgrading from nitrile to polyacrylate, silicone or Viton, for example, would provide better durability and longevity if the original nitrile seals were found to be hardened or falling apart.

Advertisement Identifying seal material. How can you tell one type of seal material from another? Color is not necessarily an accurate guide because the same material may come in several different colors. Nitrile seals may be black, green or blue. Polyacrylate is usually black, while Viton may be brown, orange or black.

Nylon has a translucent appearance while Teflon is white. Silicone is usually black. Replacement seals may not be the same color as the OEM seals even if the materials are identical, while others may be the same color but made of a different material. The color identification information contained in some OEM service manuals is also inaccurate. So going by color alone is not a very good way to tell what type of material is in a valve stem seal.

Advertisement Some engines may also have two different types of seal materials which may be color coded to distinguish the intake and exhaust valve guide seals a higher temperature material being used for the exhaust valves.

On this application, black seals polyacrylate are used on the intake valves and brown seals Viton are used on the exhaust valves. One way to identify an unknown seal material is with a burn test:. Others who do manufacture some of their own seals may use the same or a higher grade of material in their seals.

Some suppliers substitute silicone or Viton for nitrile to provide better, higher temperature performance for extended durability. But there are also aftermarket suppliers who cater to those who are looking for the least expensive seals they can buy.

Such suppliers typically use the least expensive grade of seal material nitrile to reduce cost. A lower grade seal material such as nitrile may be okay in a low-priced rebuilt engine for normal everyday driving, but may not be adequate in a more demanding application. This type of analysis makes one thing clear, not all valve stem seals are created equal. However, a lower-quality seal with insufficient heat-resistance will harden and crack prematurely and will not work as intended.

You can count on Fel-Pro to use the right material for each application. Fel-Pro uses a variety of materials including nylon, PTFE, rubber, steel and synthetic rubber or some combination of these. FKM, fluoroelastomer, is used in many Fel-Pro valve stem seals for hotter-running, late-model vehicles. It is often combined with a metal jacket or covering that totally surrounds the FKM positive seal.

On some applications, the valve stem seals are interchangeable between the intake and exhaust valves and will look exactly the same. On applications which use different seals on the intake and exhaust valves, due to needing higher temperature material on the exhaust side or different design, the seals will be bagged and labeled appropriately.