Valve Push Rod Tube Swedging
Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 5:24 pm
This post is sort to a FYI to anyone planning to re-swedge their push rod tubes (PRT's). As some will remember I was (hope it is WAS) having some leakage on some of my prt's and borrowed George's swedging tool to hopefully correct the problem. I have talked to numerous of you via this forum as well as to numerous others at my apt and most who have experience using this tool have had success doing so. I finally got up the courage yesterday to give the project a try with the help of a hangar neighbor. Pulled off the baffeling, valve cover, compressed the valve springs and removed the rocker arms. I did find all 4 exhaust rocker arms to be a much tighter fit than the intake rocker arms? I determined that my leaks were apparently on cyl's #1-4. Appears #'s 5 & 6 are OK so I didn't mess with either of them. My two main concerns were not removing the push rods properly and getting the part that sits on top of the lifter out of kelter. As instructed I intoduced shop air into the push rod and some released immediately while at least 60% of them took a second or third burst of air to break the suction. All of this leading to the point of my post. The newer ECI cylinders (mine were purchased in 1999 at overhaul time) have a thicker walled prt than the older ones and the swedging tool will not fit inside the tubes 
The part that holds the 3 balls (maybe that is called a mandrel?) will go inside just fine, but the balls cannot retract sufficiently to fit in. The ID of the newer ones are about 3/64's smaller. I then had my mechanic come out and bring his two swedging tools and neither of them would work. I am lucky that my IA is a skilled machinest and he put one of his swedging tools in his lathe and turned it down sufficiently to permit it to work. I did all 8 prt's and reassembled everything. So those of you contemplating doing this project yourselves might want to be prepared for what I ran into. I haven't had a chance to fly or even do an engine runup to see if my efforts and those of several others were successful or not.
One strange thing is I remember when I was posting vrs threads on this project before, I found one of those swedging tools in some catalogue for about $100, but now I cannot locate the source
The part that holds the 3 balls (maybe that is called a mandrel?) will go inside just fine, but the balls cannot retract sufficiently to fit in. The ID of the newer ones are about 3/64's smaller. I then had my mechanic come out and bring his two swedging tools and neither of them would work. I am lucky that my IA is a skilled machinest and he put one of his swedging tools in his lathe and turned it down sufficiently to permit it to work. I did all 8 prt's and reassembled everything. So those of you contemplating doing this project yourselves might want to be prepared for what I ran into. I haven't had a chance to fly or even do an engine runup to see if my efforts and those of several others were successful or not.One strange thing is I remember when I was posting vrs threads on this project before, I found one of those swedging tools in some catalogue for about $100, but now I cannot locate the source