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hmm it appears that when we got the head rebuilt...they forgot the new valve seals... it smokes in the mornings and burns a little oil.. when we took out the ead pistons where super clean and no signs of wear..can even still see the x lines that go on the cylinder walls... so um i forgot...is it hard to do the valve seals on the bp? where are the lifters located at? are those the metal things under the cams?

if they put in solid lifters (which I bet they did, if you had the head built), then yeah, they're the metal things right under the cams, where normally you'd have the valve springs.

other than telling you that, I have no idea how else I can help you. I've never replaced valve seals, sorry. I saw this website a while ago... it might help. http://www.miata.net/hakuna/port2.html <--- a guy porting and polishing his head, but he talks about replacing seals and stuff.

wow.. thats going to be superpainfull to do again LOL

I'd take the head back to the shop that rebuilt it.. check your reciept.. if they charged you for them and didnt put them in.. dayum but I would cause them a world of hurt LOL

Tunes67

amen to that... bring a few retired casino bouncers with you

unfortunatelly i did it in mexico..so i lost out there i justfoudn out it costs the same ehre to rebuilt it oh well my loss abnother 300 dlls for a rebuilt bleh....well more lioke 150

you can fill cylinders with air from compressor and that holds the valves shut so you can remove the springs and replace the seals,but you may need valve guides also and that means taking off the head.tools needed can be found at any good auto parts store,good luc

matt_fulghum wrote:if they put in solid lifters (which I bet they did, if you had the head built), then yeah, they're the metal things right under the cams, where normally you'd have the valve springs.

other than telling you that, I have no idea how else I can help you. I've never replaced valve seals, sorry. I saw this website a while ago... it might help. http://www.miata.net/hakuna/port2.html <--- a guy porting and polishing his head, but he talks about replacing seals and stuff.

Actually, both solid and hydrolic (HLA) lifters sit over top of the valve springs and under the cams on the DOHC. Most rebuild jobs won't replace any lifters. Lifters are very expensive. I tested my HLAs and 10 of them were bad, so I replaced all 16. I bought them at http://www.rockauto.com and got reputable ones (Sealed Power) and they were around $300 for the set. Ouch! Now of course my engine is so quiet you can clearly hear the injectors clicking away.

How do you know the valve seals were not replaced? Are you sure that is smoke in the mornings? All engines will put out white "smoke" when cold. This is really just water vapor. Do you know it is really burnt oil in your case? You might just have a leak somewhere.

If you decide to replace the seals, check your compression first, and if it is ok, you can choose to do as jimishadow suggests and save yourself a lot of hassle. You will still have to remove the cams and HLAs and so on. Make sure you use some egg cartons (or equivalent) and keep track of exactly where the HLAs, springs, keepers, etc. come from and put them all back in the same place.

Also, I followed the advice from that hakuna web site and made my own valve spring compressor. It worked very well.

how do i test nthe hlas? most likely thats bad..after head rebuilt it wouldnt tick..now its starting to again.

When you have the HLA off, try pressing the plunger (the part that sits on top of the valve stem). If you can depress it, then the HLA is bad. Someone posted a "how to take apart and fix a bad HLA" somewhere, but it didn't really look possible to do, and I didn't want to risk trying to take the dang things apart and get them back together correctly. $300 was expensive, but so is having an HLA fall apart, or even just having to take the head off and on several times.

If I had more time, I would have checked more carefully into switching to solid lifters since I replaced all of the lifters. To do so, you have to replace all the lifters *and* the cams, and it looked too expensive and risky to me since this is my daily driver and I didn't want to end up renting a car when the engine blew up from doing it wrong.

my bad about solid lifters... talkin out of my a-- here

/me commits honorable seppuku