A few weeks ago I decided I would take care of some work that I had been putting off for awhile on my 1992 300E. Plug wires, rotor, cap, upper timing chain cover gasket. The car had been using a bit of oil for some time, so I thought perhaps I would just change the valve stem seals while I had the valve cover off doing the work on the timing chain cover and see if that would take care of most of the oil consumption. They only cost $16 so I thought - what the heck - let's see how difficult this might be. I had a dickens of a time figuring out what type of valve spring compressor I should use, so while I was at Harbor Freight, I saw a pretty simple looking compression tool for $15 and went ahead and bought it. My logic being that I would try to compress what looked like the hardest spring to get to, and if that worked, then I'm good to go with all the rest.

Lo and behold, the tool actually worked and sure enough, and as suspected all the valve stem seals were bad - lots of gap between the seal and the stem. So, I thought I would post this thread with the idea that it might help someone else. The tool looks very similar to a battery cable removal tool that I bought years ago. It has a couple of claws that extend to one of the lower spring coils and a screw that sits on top of the spring. As you turn clockwise on the screw, it compresses the spring as the claws grab the the lower part of the valve spring - almost like a strut compressor (if you've ever used one of those).

Going slowly so I wouldn't drop little pieces of metal where they shouldn't be dropped (ball sockets, retainers), I got the seals changed in about 2 hours. You could go faster if you did this often.

If I could ever figure out how to post pictures I would attach a picture of the tool. If you go to Harbor Freight I don't think you can get the wrong tool since it's the only Valve Spring compressor I could find at Harbor Freight.

Regards,

David Lee

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92 300E - 116K miles - Sold
77 Euro 350SL - 67k miles
94 Explorer 147k miles
2009 Hyundai Genesis - 65k miles