I've been told that changing the seals will only last for 12-15,000 miles if the real issue is that my valve guides need replacement. Mostly accurate.

1. If my guides are bad, how can I tell? is there a way that I can tell to what degree they are bad? They will have play from the left side to the right side of the car. Exhaust usually wears worse, rock the valve back and forth.

2. Since I don't need the special seal pliers, do the seals just slide down until they can't go any further? Yes, they push onto the cylinder head/top of the guide. Almost no resistance over the valve stem, a friction resistance to push onto the head. They stay in place on the head and wipe the valve as it moves up and down. A small plastic protector should be in the seal kit , it slides over the valve before the seal and then comes off and gets re-used on the next valve.

3. Assuming I've pressurized the cylinder to at least 75 psi, will I be able to slide the seals with as much force as I can muster to put them into their proper place with a very low risk of the valves falling back into the cylinder, or do I have to be fairly gentle? Not much force required, cylinder pressure has no effect.

4. I'm planning to use lots of magnets to try and hold the little pieces in place during disassembly and re-assembly. Makes sense? Good idea.

5. I see an excessive amount of crud build up in the valve train, More than I've ever seen in any of my previous cars. I'll clean all that mess up first. A couple of runs on synthetic oil will work wonders on the clean-up.

I got his car from a relative of a buddy that neglected the car. Because it didn't have any peeling clear coat, almost dent free save a just a couple of door dings, other than the sun roof, everything works- even the a/c. It was too good to let it go straight to the junk yard. Though if this doesn't fix the excessive smoking, it might still quickly end up there. My Indy says he would charge between $400-700 to do just the seals.When does it smoke? What color is the smoke? Does it burn oil? Replace the spark plugs during this process.

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"Rudeness is a weak man's imitation of strength" - Eric Hoffer