Valve spring installation orientation

[Btzj02]

1964 gas 4000 4 cylinder. Recently I lost power on the #1 cylinder on a freshly rebuilt engine. The problem was a broken exhaust spring on the #1 cylinder. The shop manual says to install the springs with the tighter windings towards the head. After inspecting all of the springs it seems as if they were installed with no consideration of which direction the tighter windings were installed, half are up and half are down. Incidentally the only mechanical work the machine shop did was install the valves and springs because they wanted to run a vacuum test on the reassembled and refurbished head. Two questions: 1. Would the spring installed upside down cause it to fail? 2. If an up side down spring is not the cause of the failure would you remove and reinstall correctly all the other springs that are upside down or would you leave them be? (On line there is some mention of valve float occuring at high RPMs if the springs are installed upside down).

 

[Ray,IN]

Call that machine shop and request they lick their calf over re; broken spring. The valve spring cap should fit best just on one end of the spring.

 

[Duner Wi]

#2, Install valve springs in correct orientation. Tighter wound coils towards head as the manual instructs.

 

[Btzj02]

Thanks. I got up early this morning and removed and reinstalled all the springs the correct way. I used the air in the cylinder trick so I did not have to remove the head. Lesson learned: inspect everything even if the "professionals" did the work.

 

[Eman85]

Professional only means they got paid to do the job. I would inform them of their work and lack of quality.