'67 273 valve oil seal replacement

[yarcraft91]

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 I’m doing this first because A) it’s 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 doesn’t stop the oil burning, it’s 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. I’d 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. I’m thinking the oil seals might not be the reason for the engine’s high oil consumption- we’ll 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.

 

[4spdragtop]

Awesome! Feels good when things go smoothly.

 

[yarcraft91]

Thanks. What's a good gift for my car to celebrate 40 years of ownership? Happens next month.

 

[mvh]

When I did this it completely eliminated the "puff of smoke" at startup. So it worked for me, hope it works for you.

40 years? Wow. Mine has been in my family for 37. I suggest treating it to a full detail.

 

[65Val]

Thanks. What's a good gift for my car to celebrate 40 years of ownership? Happens next month.

A full tank of Premium!

 

[yarcraft91]

Update:

After a rainy weather period, I'm back to driving this car, so I'll see if the oil consumption has dropped- 75 miles so far. After the valve oil seal job, I did a preliminary valve lash adjustment (cold) with a little extra clearance over factory spec to account for thermal expansion. After some driving, I'll expect all the parts I removed/reinstalled have fully re-seated and I'll do a proper hot lash adjustment (hoping for a cool weather spell for that project).

I adjusted intake valves to 0.016" and exhaust to 0.025", all cold, as this is the gap I found on most intake and exhaust valves upon initial inspection. I found two exhaust valves with a gap greater than 0.030" and one intake less than 0.013", adjusted those to the values above. After a little driving, I'll check those measurements and readjust to the 0.015" and 0.023" cold lash that would be recommended prior to a hot lash adjustment of 0.013" and 0.021", respectively.

In addition to the oil seal replacement and lash adjustment, I used Seafoam spray to de-carbon the engine. The smoke clouds behind the car were impressive, however brief. The car is running as well as ever right now, look forward to how it runs after the final hot lash adjustment.

Thanks to some other recommendations on this forum, I bought a NAPA Echelin ignition control module (ECH TP51, made in China) and coil resistor (ICR23) to carry as spares for the orange MOPAR module and resistor I've used for the past many years. Pulling the original distributor and replacing with a MOPAR electronic distributor and ignition system is one of the best things I ever did with this car!

NAPA also had the best tappet feeler gauge set I've been able to find, with long, bent feelers from 0.005" to 0.030" in increments of 0.001". Bought one, oiled the gauges. Maybe I'll finally stop burning my hands on the exhaust manifold.

This car has an aftermarket A/C system, already installed when I bought it in 1974. Still works after all this time, only had to replace the idler pulley twice and plenty of refrigerant stockpiled. thinking of removing it, as it has to be moved to remove driver-side valve cover, it's held on with water pump bolts, I hate the leaks I get doing a lash adjustment. OTOH, working A/C nearly as old as the car...maybe I'll just get shorter bolts to temporarily stop the WP leaks.