I bought at autozone a valve spring compressor. It is the type with jaws on the bottom that grab the lower part of the spring and smaller jaws at the top that yoy scre down that come in contact with the keeper area of the spring.
When I use it it pulls the bottom of the spring up and I cant get the keeper off. Am I doing somethign wrong?
Take a small hammer and tap on the "retainer" to free it from the keepers. They get stuck together.
The keepers are kept in place by the tapered bore of the retainer. Once you have compressed the spring, it is usually necessary to use something like a dead blow (rubber or otherwise) to give the tool and spring assembly a blow or
2 to break the retainer loose from the keepers. It is usually best (for me) to do this when the spring has been compressed enough to be loose and then complete the compression. It is lesss likely you will lose a keeper. You also need a magnet to easily pull the keepers. I sometimes use the magnet to install the keeper and manuever them into place.Lugnut
lugnut wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
If you give the retainers a good rap with a hammer "before" you compress the springs you will have less problems. KB
That's probably true with most of them but, too many of them are like my old 351CJ with the good springs; they just stick again before they can be removed. If the spring pressure is taken by the compressor just enough to take the load off the collets, they can be jarred loose to stay while I finish compressing the spring. I find it reduces the chance of a collet becoming a dammit lock.
Lugnut
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