Inner spring removal advice

If you have the valve covers off, use a marker pen to place a black mark on each pushrod. The rotate the engine by hand a few times and check to see if each one has rotated, even a bit. If so, then that is a good sign. If one or more does not rotate, then removing the inner spring will not save it.

Think about the level of pressure below which this is safe. Stock engines never had the inner spring removed... since there are none. Below some spring pressure level, things are fine to go with no further steps.