Someone on TGO has to have encountered this before. Has anyone ever encountered problems (when doing a valve spring upgrade) with internal damper wires that go through the ENTIRE free length (uncompressed) of the spring?? This causes the retainers (even the ones recommended specifically for them) to not sit evenly on top of the spring until you install them on the valves. I know this is "normal," but it seems that having a small internal wire pushing on the inner "step" of the retainer on one segment of the radius only would create an uneven load. For the record, I'm referring to Crane 99846 springs and 99915 retainers. It's a newbie question, any input would be appreciated.

 

Gotcha. I've used those springs before- they're great for situations where you can't or don't want to go to a larger diameter spring but still need some serious spring pressure.

The inner dampening coil is designed to sit on the same step as the actual spring coil itself. As you say, it goes the entire (free) length of the spring and will bind up and break if it's sitting on some lower "step" of the retainer. I've always used them with stock retainers and there have not been any problems as you describe. I'm guessing some mismatch of the spring and your chosen retaners.

 

Yeah, I just looked at those retainers. They're wrong for those springs. They have 2 "steps" in them and you need a retainer with only 1, like stock. The dampening coil is catching on the 2nd step while the spring is seating on the first one.

You've got a parts mismatch. I'd recommend going back to stock-type retainers to remedy this situation.

 

I appreciate your responses. What really puzzles me is that these are Crane's recommended retainers for this application. I would like to contact them to ask them what's going on with that recommendation. To make matters more interesting, however, is that World Castings' springs (the 1.25 inchers that come with my new heads) have a damper wire as well, and when you compress any damper-wire equipped spring to its installed height, and subsequently open the valve, they all exhibit this quality. Not to question your expertise, but could it be possible that this damper spring is made to be preloaded differently than the main spring?? Thanks again for your input. It helps.