Valve Spring Preparation and Installation

High-Performance Engine Building Basics:

Valve Spring Preparation
and Installation

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 This series is as hands-on as possible, and informs
you of subtleties you just won’t find anywhere else.

Valve springs are among the most of engine catastrophes that are sure to make
underappreciated, misunderstood, critical, You Tube under the “biggest engine fails ever”
and delicate components in the entire racing category. In fact, I’d bet that most of the
engine. They are primary contributors to the engine blow-ups you see are precipitated by
horsepower chain. They run astoundingly failed valve springs.
hot due to internal and external friction (plus
some conductive heat from the combustion Selecting the right spring is critical to the
process through the head and valve stem), performance, longevity, and power output you
they cycle between 15 and 90 times per can expect from an engine. They are easily
second, plus they bounce, surge, rotate, and overlooked and often go undiagnosed as a
rub against one another. All that makes them source of lost horsepower. The purpose of
prone to failures that can result in the kind a valve spring is to preload the valve on the
seat and (by extension through the rocker
and pushrod) the lifter on the cam face.
What you need to be able to do is control
these parts so that the lifter can accurately
track the camshaft lobe profile. The valve
must accurately open and close at the
designed points and follow the camshaft
ramp to full close without bouncing off the
seat. Bounce is a bad thing. Although some
exists in nearly all spring-loaded poppet valve
systems, it must be minimized to prevent
seat, lock, retainer, and valve damage and a
loss of accurate valve timing. We know that
accurate valve timing is critical -- some racing
organizations spend millions on cams, often
changing specifications just a degree at a time
Never assume that you are accurately measuring to arrive at the optimum cylinder filling and
anything unless you’ve got standards to use for emptying event timing for a given application.
calibration. I want to know if my spring height If you can’t control when the valve seats and
micrometer is accurate. It should be close, but seals the cylinder, what’s the point? You’re
how close is it? At 20 threads per in., each turn of chasing horsepower ghosts if you can’t
the body should be .050 in., so I set up my height
control precisely when the cylinder seals and
gauge on a small granite surface plate and zero
the gauge on the plate surface. I then raise it
unseals. It doesn’t do much good to degree-
and lower it a few times to confirm that it returns in a cam if the valve train doesn’t follow the
to zero. profile, does it?

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Valve Spring Preparation and Installation
Too Much is Just Right
How much spring pressure is enough spring
pressure? The cam grinders often offer up a
suggested pressure and rpm range for a cam
and spring package. But those suggestions
are pretty generic and they assume a few
things. First of all, what kind of valve are
they assuming that you’re running? Stainless
steel? Sodium filled? Hollow stem? 5MM
stem or 3/8 stem? Titanium? So what
assumptions do cam grinders make when
they offer you a spring package? I certainly
don’t know, but the suggestions are just
that -- suggestions. If you’re running conical
or beehives, ovate wire, small-stemmed
titanium valves and titanium retainers, you
can use less pressure because the self-
damping action of conical springs, beehive Next, using a two-in. certified standard I check to
springs, and ovate wire springs means better see that the height gauge reads out two in. -- and
it does.
valve control with less pressure. Obviously,
lighter components require less pressure
to be controlled, but if you’re running big,
heavy stainless steel valves you’ll need to
run the seating pressure up to control the
mass. As a side benefit, changing valve train
mass changes spring requirements in part
because changing mass changes the resonant
frequency of a system; mass helps you tune
in and out of resonance, acting as half of the
spring pressure/mass equation that dictates
at what rpm resonance affects operation.

You would like to hit the design criteria

on the nose, of course, but if you have to
err, err on the side of too much pressure.
While increased spring pressure does
increase turning force and friction (it can
account for as much as 30% of total engine Once I’ve checked the height mic, I change
friction, number three on the list behind the its reading a few times, reset it to two in.,
coolant pump and oil pump) as one spring and recheck it. Now I know it’s accurate and
is compressed, you have to remember that repeatable and I can certify it for use. This
somewhere on that engine another spring is particular one is supplied by PAC Springs, and the
uncompressing and putting energy back into quality of the tool is exactly the kind of quality
you see in the company’s springs.
(Continued on p.28)
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 Common Valve Spring
Terms and Definitions
Free height
Overall length of the unloaded, uninstalled spring.

Installed height
The suggested overall length of the spring as
installed on the head measured with the valve
on the seat. Installed height can be varied to
achieve seat pressure so long as the spring
doesn’t go into bind.

Coil bind
The condition of a fully-compressed spring
with each coil touching the one above it and
below it. On a running engine, this is a bad
thing and will cause a catastrophic emptying
of your wallet.

Open height
The overall height of an installed spring at
maximum lobe lift.

Seat or open pressure

The pressure in pounds per square inch of
the installed spring with the valve on the seat.

Nose or open pressure

The pressure in pounds per square inch with
the valve in the fully open position.

Spring rate
The amount of weight needed to compress a
spring one inch, rated in pounds per square inch.

Spring rating
Spring load in pounds per square inch at
both the open and closed position. Usually
displayed as a range, for example “125#-425#.”
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Valve Spring Preparation and Installation

Intake installed height.

Exhaust installed height. Valve seat height check.

This intake valve measured 2.035 in. and is different from the exhaust at 1.9875. So why is this so
common and what causes it? You’ll only know if you do quite a bit of measuring the first time you
lay hands on your new parts, which I do just to see if all the work that was done to the heads was
consistent. I start by measuring the stem heights of all the valves and seeing how consistent they
are. In this case, there’s only a .003 in. difference between the intakes and exhausts. Since I’m set up,
next I measure the valve tip length, since that will affect where the locks engage the retainer. Simply
zero the height gauge on the top of the stem and drop it down to measure the tip. In this case, it’s a
3/8th in. tip and it measures .374 -- within .001in. Next, I’ll measure the valve seat height by laying the
head down on a flat aluminum plate and dropping a transfer punch down through to guide so that it
rests on the plate under the head. I then set up to measure between the plate surface and the spring
perch surface and zero out the indicator. On these heads, there was only a couple of thousandths of
(Continued on page 27)
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variation across 16 seats. Next, I measure the
retainers and the valve spring seat locator cups
(frankly, they are nearly always right on the
money one to another), and that only leaves one
thing: the depth of the seat and how precisely
the face of the valve was finished to get the
overall installed height of the springs. Now, I can
tell how accurate the seat-cutting equipment
was. On this example, it was nearly perfect. The
maximum installed heights on eight intakes
ranged between 2.035 in. and 2.050 in., and the
installed heights on the exhausts measured
between 1.985 in. and 1.995in. In the end, the
springs were installed at 1.970 to 1.975in. to get
the seat pressure and distance to bind where I
wanted it. Why is all this important (other than
for satisfying my overwhelming perfectionist
tendencies)? Two reasons: First, as things wear it
tells you what you need to check and what things
you can say with near complete certainty will not
need checking -- it helps you find problems more
quickly. Second, the entire valve train (less the
spring) is now a known quantity.

Exhaust valve stem height.

Intake valve stem height. Autozero, then measure tip height.

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Valve Spring Preparation and Installation
the assembly -- which you already know if
you’ve ever lost control of a break-over bar
while rotating a race engine with stout valve
springs on it. All I’ll say is if you’re going
to be careless while you’re hanging onto
that bar, you need to invest in an athletic
cup, a mouth guard, and a full-face helmet
because I’m telling you that a 30 in. bar will
knock you stupid. Please don’t ask me how
I know that -- there are some things a man
just doesn’t need to relive. The point is that
you must control the valve or risk losing
significant power, even at the expense of a
little additional friction from excessive valve
spring pressures.

Now I know that there are those who believe

that high pressures will pull the heads off the
valves or pound the seats out, but that’s not
true. Race valves aren’t two-piece with the
head and stem formed separately like valves
were in the bad old days, and once at rest
on the seat total load on the valve is not that
high. Worn guides, LOW spring pressures and
poorly designed cam profiles cause those
problems, not high spring pressures. Think
about it: Rumor has it that some Pro Stock
guys are running titanium valves with 5mm
stems, seat pressures well over 400 lbs., and
open pressures over 1,200 lbs. Do you have
to maintain those systems? Hell yes, but All springs
maintenance is three-quarters of the racing are subject
game anyway, isn’t it? to sudden
failure, but most
will give some
Spring preparation kind of warning,
Everyone approaches a problem differently, slowly losing
and I’m sure that there are many serious and pressure over
capable engine builders out there who will time. This Buxton
not agree with the steps that I use to prepare on-head valve
a racing engine spring. I’m also sure that as spring tester is
time passes my rituals will change as I learn the Cadillac of all spring testers and
displays the kind of accuracy and
more and have more time to gather data. If
repeatability that a serious racer
there’s a really sharp championship builder needs to keep track of spring life.
(Continued on p.34)
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Spring preparation is some of the most tedious
engine work, in my opinion. I start by removing Must not nick the spring while grinding.
the sharp tangs and edges on both ends of every
spring. I lay the end of the last coil back so that
it won’t grab either the spring seat or the retainer
face. I use a thin piece of aluminum and a plastic
carpenter’s shim (available at Menard’s or
Lowe’s) to protect the spring from an unexpected
nick as I work. My goal is to minimize the amount
of “digging” that those sharp ends do as the
spring moves or rotates. If you look at a spring
closely, you’ll see that as you compress it the
coils try to roll, which imparts movement into the
spring -- on some engines at certain rpms, the
spring can rotate completely around at a fairly
high rate. I don’t want this little rotating shrapnel
generator to remove material from the seat, the
retainer, or the spring itself to share with other
moving parts. Next, using the Manley tool shown
I relieve the sharp edge on the inside of both end
coils. Sharp is bad, radii are good. Then it goes
in for polishing. When that’s done, the spring is
bright, shiny, deburred, and radiused, and if you
push it into your hand and twist it (clockwise in
this example) it should not grab or cut your palm.

Pencil grinder and

chamfered and
radiused spring.

Polished deburred and chamfered.

Manley tool for chamfering the springs.

Smooth enough not to catch.

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Valve Spring Preparation and Installation

The polishing rig is a repurposed cartridge tumbler.

Before and after polish.

After polishing cleaning and oiling. I like to tumble polish for twenty four hours.

It’s pretty obvious in these pictures what polishing accomplishes. The surfaces are almost silky
smooth after twenty-four hours in the media. You see those flat-wound dampeners? On these two-
spring sets that dampener acts like a soft coupler between the inner and outer coil. That little friction
coupler acts to “share” resonance between springs, adding just a little mass to its larger or smaller
partner and/or grabbing and slowing the companion spring as it moves out of time to its partner.
Since the individual springs go in and out of resonance at different rpm, the dampener couples them
up to tamp down surge or oscillation. On three-spring sets, the close fit of the springs one inside the
other does the same job. The takeaway here is that you should find it difficult to remove and install
the inner springs… it’s how they’re designed. I’ll warn you about something here: When you grab the
large outer spring to push the inners through, do not let the fleshy palm of your hand get in between
the coils to where the inner coil you are pushing can pinch it between the outer-side of the inner coil
and the inside of the outer coil. Acts just like a guillotine -- you will bleed and cuss. Wear gloves.
Don’t ask me how I know this.

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Valve Spring Preparation and Installation
After polishing, deburring, binding, and cleaning I like to lay out a balancing grid on a large piece of
paper. The Buxton manual spring compressor is dead accurate and fast for sorting and laying out
springs. Again, you need to use standards to verify your equipment calibration -- when the equipment
comes out, so does the calibration spring. It goes without saying that this is one spring you DO
NOT want to take to bind! Two or three readings across the range will tell you if your tester is still in
calibration. I sort springs individually and take them to an arbitrary height, then lock the travel on the

The entire spring package.

Seats are part of the installed height. Buxton calibration spring.

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ram to attain the same height each time and record the pressures. I then put the lower outers with the
higher inners and try to get the entire batch within plus or minus 10 lbs. In this example, we are plus
or minus seven lbs. across 16 springs. You’ll note that I’m holding a couple of different kinds of spring
locators or spring seats, an inexpensive stamped piece and a CNC machined part from Manley. I’m
not a fan of the stamped seats for any real performance work.

The Buxton is best for spring

sorting and balancing.

Precision gauge makes balancing easy. The spring seat on aluminum heads.

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Valve Spring Preparation and Installation

Spring layout graph plus or minus seven pounds.

out there willing to mentor me and set me at full lift with just .030-.060 in. clearance
straight on my process, I’ll just say “thank from bind because approaching bind helps
you” in advance. I’m a work in progress and I dampen spring oscillation and surge for the
appreciate and accept all the help I can get. same reason that you can’t dance in a crowed
elevator -- no room to wiggle!
I start with a physical inspection when the
parts arrive, checking for nicks, scratches, Next, I deburr the ends because I don’t want
and any signs of rust. Then, I cycle the them to dig into the retainer or spring seat
springs five times to solid (bind) and take note and remove bits of metal that circulate in the
of the pressures after the last cycle. I know engine, especially titanium from the retainers,
that binding the spring lowers the pressure which is non-magnetic and much harder than
but I want that spring stabilized to the extent the cylinder wall and crankshaft, thus prone to
that I can get it stabilized. I don’t care if the causing galling with dissimilar materials.
pressure drops a bit -- I can shim it to get
it where I need it to be. In fact, installed I then chamfer the inside of the top and
heights as supplied by the manufacturers bottom coils for stress relief. The flat ends
are only suggestions. As long as you’ve got are ground onto the spring leaving a relatively
the room, you can make the installed height sharp inner edge. I use a chamfering cone to
whatever you need it to be to get the seat break that sharp edge. Next comes 24 hours
pressures you’re looking for. Ideally, you in a vibratory polisher with walnut shells and
would like to see the spring fully compressed a metal polishing compound to polish and
(Continued on p.37)
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Valve Spring Preparation and Installation
Once you measure the
maximum installed
height on your
height micrometer,
you can transfer the
measurement to your
spring tester just by
moving the spring seat
(or locator, if you prefer
that nomenclature),
spring, and retainer
over to the tester
platens and setting
your zero. Compress
to the installed height,
lock down the ram stop,
and run the set of 16,
recording position as
you go. Then, lower the
ram to the maximum lift
point, lock the ram, and
run the springs again to
capture seat and open
pressures. You must
use the retainer when
you test the springs
-- the inner coils are
shorter than the outers
and you need the steps
in the retainer so that
the coils all load up
simultaneously. You
also need to have the
seat in place. The lower
platen represents the
machined seat area
on the head. If you
put a seat or shim
against that surface
it has to be in place
during spring testing.
On the Compu-spring Don’t make setup hard --
system, you can enter transfer measurement with
the retainer thickness a height micrometer.
so it will correct for
that thickness in its
computations, but it has no way to know if there is a spring seat used with the spring under test. You
must test with it sitting under the spring, against the lower platen.

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 provide a little stress relief. After a thorough
cleaning in mineral spirits (you do NOT need
walnut shells in the engine -- check the ends
where the tight wrap forms the flat top and
bottom for remnants stuck between coils) I
lubricate the springs with oil and set them
aside for a second inspection.

I carefully and thoroughly inspect each

spring a second time for nicks, pits, or
scratches. The surface of spring wire is
harder than Chinese arithmetic and it will
fracture through any nick present. Next, I
Compuspring makes hard work easy. pressure check the inner and outer springs
separately and sorted them -- the highest and
lowest are mated up and prepared for the final
pressure check on the Compu-Spring tester. I
swap the springs around as needed to arrive
at installed pressures as close as possible
across all springs.

Once installed and run, how often should

you check springs? At least after each racing
weekend, more if the event lasts several days.
You should use an on-car spring checker
that reads seat pressure, and you must
inspect for rust and signs of end coil failures
that might not affect engine performance
Cannot check springs without the retainer. very much. As a general rule, you should
replace springs when you see your initial seat
pressures drop by 10%. I wish I could tell you
how long a prepped race spring will last, but
I can’t. It seems that they either fail almost
immediately (caused, I believe, by unseen
stresses introduced into the wire during
manufacturing), or they function quite a while,
slowly losing pressure over sometimes as
long as two or three seasons (on a 1,000+ hp
Sportsman class racer).

Because they’re expensive and labor-

intensive to prepare, getting a little extra
life out of them saves time and money, so
With the Compuspring, you have a permanent record. here are a few suggestions. Between race
(Continued on p.40)
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Valve Spring Preparation and Installation

There are many compressors, but Buxton is by

far the best.

When it’s time to put it all together (after you’ve

determined the best installed height, seat
pressures, and coil bind distances), you should
have a good way to control your assembly
process. I use the tray shown (available at CVS
Buxton compression in operation. Racing Products) as I build and as I tear down
to keep track of everything. Once the new parts
are assigned a position, I mark them and put
them on the tray in the correct location. The
springs are sitting on the seats and shims and
the valve guide seals are inside the spring. Once
it’s all laid out, it’s time to build. I use Ultra Gel
on the seats and retainers, as well as under
the lash caps during the build. It really seems
to do a great job reducing start-up wear. If it’s
in the valve train and metal touches metal, it
gets a dab of Ultra Gel. Don’t forget those lash
caps if you are running titanium valves without
hardened inserts. The steel roller in the rocker
must run against steel at the valve tip. Another
Buxton tool has found a home in my toolbox:
a spring compressor. It’s the best all-around
spring compressor I’ve ever used, and like all the
company’s stuff, it’s top quality. You might not
like it the day you buy it, but you sure will every
time you get it out to use it on a valve spring that
looks like a mis-labeled chassis spring.
Use lube to prevent galling at retainer and spring seat.
Images continue on next page...
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Valves springs, seats, shims, retainers, and
locks storage.

Loaded spring and valve tray.

Have to use steel lash caps if there are no

Titanium retainer and lash cap in place. hardened inserts at valve tip.

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Valve Spring Preparation and Installation
weekends, use a spring oil spray like Comp’s
With #106 product and replace any spring that
titanium- rusts because those tiny pits are the starting
coated valves points for most failures. Keeping your race
we’re talking car in a climate-controlled shop is the best
real money. practice, but keeping the spring lubed may
be your only option. I’ve also heard of racers
rolling the engine over by hand periodically
or releasing the valve train in the off season,
but I’ve got no way to evaluate the efficacy
of that practice. We tear down every year for
inspection, so for us that’s not an issue.

Other considerations
Other often-overlooked factors are the
operation of the cam drive and the harmonic
damper. Belt drives aren’t just for quick
adjustment at the track (is there ever
something “quick” at the track after you drop
half the parts in the grass or roast your hand
on a hot header? Factoring in search time
and the drive to the hospital, you’re better off
with good prep at the shop).

Belt drives absorb a lot of the violent

snapping energy stored in the crankshaft
as each power pulse hits, and it’s the same
with the harmonic damper. Dampening the
snap of the crank so that it doesn’t vary cam
speed smoothes valve train operation and
removes one more excitation force that can
set up resonance.

Left Column: Controlling the valve is all about

mass, preload, good components, good
preparation, and proper assembly. If you’re
running high dollar, small-diameter coated-stem
titanium valves like the one shown, or big old
heavy 3/8-stem stainless steel valves, you’ve
got to size the support parts appropriately if
you’re to have any hope of getting the valves to
follow the cam lobes. Making power is all about
Surface plate and stainless steel valves. precision and good design.

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 On the output end of the crankshaft you’ve
got quite a bit of mass in either a flywheel and
clutch assembly or torque converter, but on
the forward end you’ve only got the damper,
plus maybe a drive for an alternator, vacuum
pump, and dry sump oil pump. The cam belt
drive and damper are key components in
stabilizing valve train action and producing
smooth and repeatable valve motion on any
cam-in-block “V” engine.

Resources:
PAC racing springs: www.racingsprings.com/
PSI springs: www.psisprings.com/
Isky homepage: www.iskycams.com/
Lunati: www.lunatipower.com
Comp Cams: www.compcams.com
Ferrea: www.ferrea.com/Valve-Springs/c7535
Manley: www.manleyperformance.com/
Crane: www.cranecams.com/
Spintron video showing high speed valve spring
operation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfmb-tCo2yA

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