Series Land Rover (U.S.A./Canada)
Serving the Series 1, Series 2, Series 3 and other Land Rover communities worldwide.

Last month the cylinder head of the Series Land Rover was removed so now we have it on the bench minus the inlet and exhaust manifolds and the rocker shaft has been removed.

Now valves have to be removed and it really isn't possible to do this without a valve spring compressor which are easy to use and not expensive. The compressor is held perpendicular and firmly and screwed down to compress the spring. Often, the spring retainer on top of the spring is not initially pushed down when the compressor is tightened; in this case tap the retainer sharply to break it's seal with the collets. Once the seal is broken then further tightening of the compressor will enable the semi-circular collets to be removed (tweezers can be useful here). With the collets removed, the compressor can be slowly released, then removed and then the spring retainer and spring removed.

Now the rubber valve stem oil can be removed by sliding it up along the valve stem and then the valve can be removed from the cylinder head by pushing it down through the combustion chamber.

The same proceedure is then repeated for each of the remaining valves.

It should be emphasised that the compressor will not be able to separate the collets unless it is truly perpendicular to the cylinder head. To facilitate this make sure that compressor's disc is accurately centralised on the valve head before tensioning the compressor.