Freeing Stuck Valve

[laserandy]

I hope y'all don't mind me posting here, I'm a Gray Marine owner, however I think my issue is probably shared with Atomic 4 owners.

I appear to have a stuck valve on my No. 3 Cylinder, probably from moisture that accumulated over the winter, possibly due to inadequate fogging during winterization last fall.

My mechanic has suggested that I may want to consider yanking the engine and repowering (probably with an A4), however before I start down that road I would like to take at least a reasonable crack at freeing it.

I've read the threads here regarding the bent screwdriver and using needle nose vice grips to twist the valve to free it, if those don't work, I gather I need to yank the head to try to free it.

My question is how to work the valve free once the head is pulled. Is there anything to watch out for damaging?

Thanks,

Andrew

[Don Moyer]

Andrew,

Once you remove the head, the most important thing you have to be careful of is that you don't try to pound a valve down while the cam is trying to keep it up. The easy way to determine the position of the tappets is to remove the valve cover. Otherwise, you have to rotate each cylinder to TDC of its compression stroke to be sure the cam lobes for that cylinder are allowing the tappets to lower, which in turn will allow you to tap the valves in that cylinder down.

Don

[laserandy]

Don,

That makes a lot of sense (although not sure it would have occurred to me until after damage...).

Andrew,

Once you remove the head, the most important thing you have to be careful of is that you don't try to pound a valve down while the cam is trying to keep it up. The easy way to determine the position of the tappets is to remove the valve cover. Otherwise, you have to rotate each cylinder to TDC of its compression stroke to be sure the cam lobes for that cylinder are allowing the tappets to lower, which in turn will allow you to tap the valves in that cylinder down.

Don

[laserandy]

Success!!! and another short question.

Wanted to give an update and thank you for the help. After spraying a lot of stuff (WD-40, PB Blaster and Kroil) into the No. 3 spark-plug hole and getting the valve hammered down once (the exhaust valve is nearly directly under the plug in the Gray Marine engine) I finally got around to spending some time with it on Saturday.

I put a screwdriver head against the side of the valve and sprayed the Kroil down the screwdriver, then pounded the valve down, then sprayed more Kroil around the closed valve, turned over the engine until it was back on the intake stroke (I could see the intake valve rise each time) and repeated the process. After about 30 minutes, the valve snapped shut with a very light hammer rap, and after an hour, I could get it to close with just hand pressure on the screwdriver. Finally it started closing itself. I started the engine and ran it at low rpms for a couple minutes and it finally loosened up enough to start firing. Ran it for a while and it seems to be working properly again.

Now, the question. I checked my oil and it is high, and very cloudy. I will do three oil changes in the next couple days and take another look.

Now, for the question:

Is it possible that running the engine with the exhaust valve stuck open caused me to suck water into the oil (which would be a corrected problem once I get rid of the water) or is it necessarily something more serious? I also cranked the engine a fair amount without starting a couple weeks ago (wire fell off the coil, stupid me didn't see it until after trying to start it for a long time with no success), could that have done it?

Thanks again,

Andrew

[Don Moyer]

Andrew,

Unfortunately I cannot give you any assurance that a stuck exhaust valve would cause water to enter into the crankcase. Let's hope that your oil will clear up after a couple changes and we won't have to explain where it came from.

Don