Rebuilding Austin Healy Sprite Engine No 9C-U-H 619
Assembling the Cylinder Head



April 8, 2003



I then turned to the cylinder head, with some trepidation. The machine shop rebuilt the heads, but I was afraid they had not assembled the valves, springs, seals and retainers. The gasket kit I got had some stem seals, and they were not installed.

So, I took the intake valve assemblies apart, . . . and reassembled as follows:

Bare valves in head:

 



First, one of the stem seals:



 

Note that Paul Asgeirsson on the Yahoo Bugeye list suggested that a groove should be machined in the valve guide to help retain the seal.  I do not have more details, but it is something to be investigated next time.

Then, the spring:



Then came the retainers, a small flat o-ring, the little keepers and the retaining spring. I assembled them in the order shown below:



At this point, I fitted the head to the engine block.

This means fitting the studs:



and adjusting the head gasket:



Before everything can be bolted down, the cam followers (or tappets)



. . . and the pushrods have to be installed



Then, the rocker shaft is bolted down. Once again, this is easy and simply a matter of ensuring that the proper parts are assembled in the proper order.



Finally, valve clearance is adjusted in the normal manner. The Haynes manual contains a neat recipe for adjusting the valves in a specific order, to ensure that the adjustment is always done on the heel of the camshaft. This may be old hat to mechanics who are used to these engines, but it was new to me. In any event, this part went well.

Next step: some of the ancillaries.

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