'67 273 valve oil seal replacement
Decided to replace the valve oil seals today in my 67 Barracuda 273 2bbl. I bought this car with 60Kmiles in Sept 1974 and have owned it ever since, oil seals are probably the factory originals. Oil consumption is up and Im doing this first because A) its easy and B) cheap at $16 for parts and C) with the engine idling, there is only suction without pressure pulses at the oil fill port so no obvious ring sealing issues. If this doesnt stop the oil burning, its probably time for head refresh or an engine rebuild, as the car has 140Kmiles now. Thought my experience with this job was worth sharing.
Bought parts from the local NAPA Auto store. They offered two types of OEM-style oil seals, branded Sealed Power and Fel-Pro, bought the Fel-Pro. They came in an 8-pack, polyacrylate material, all seals the same size (I was expecting the intake seals to be taller than the exhaust). In retrospect, both brands are owned by Federal Mogul, so probably the same product.
A friend had a great valve spring compressor, with a 3/8 square drive socket for use with a ratchet. Id highly recommend that vs. a wheel turned by hand. Also borrowed a hose that screws into the spark plug holes to hook up the air compressor, pressurized to 80 psi.
Stuffed paper towels into the oil return holes in the head, so no little parts could fall in there. Probably the first time the rocker arms have been removed, no issues doing that
Every valve keeper was stuck to the valve locks. Options were to tap the keeper with a hammer and big drift before compressing the valve spring or compress the spring and then tap the spring compressor with a hammer. The later was more reliable.
The valve locks were not stuck to the valve stems and easy to remove with a small magnet probe I got from Ace Hardware. Wife gave me a Craftsman stainless steel magnetic tray to manage tools and small parts- that came in very handy today.
All the old valve oil seals were the same size. The only difference between the intake and exhaust seals- exhaust seals were harder. Not surprised to see hard OE seals in a 47 YO engine. Only three seals showed any damage. Both cylinder #1 seals had a small piece missing at the bottom edge and the exhaust seal in #3 was in many pieces (Spent some extra time chasing down all the pieces). The rest were all intact, probably doing their job and not clogging up the oiling system. Im thinking the oil seals might not be the reason for the engines high oil consumption- well see.
Unplugged the oil returns, re-installed the rocker arms, torqued to 15 lb-ft, factory spec, installed valve covers, then called it a day. Tomorrow , install new spark plugs, run the engine and adjust the valve lash. New Fel-Pro cover gaskets are waiting to finish that job.
So, a simple enough job with no nasty surprises, which is the usual story during my 40 years working on this car.
