First off, I'm a cheap ba$tard, but that's not why I tried this method of installing valve springs and retainers. I did it because I like working on my own car, the weather was nice, to learn, and mainly just to see if it could be done.

Some may have heard of the "rope" method, and that's what I used. Basically, you feed small diameter rope (I used 1/4" three strand nylon) in through an open spark plug hole into the cylinder, then rotate the engine so the piston comes up and squashes the rope against the valves, effectlvely holding them in place while you take the springs/retainers out and install the new ones. I used rope instead of an air compressor and basically followed this install https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/sh...=valve+springs

The biggest concern using this method is making sure you keep the timing belt tense on all the gears (cam gears, balance shaft, crank) so that it doens't jump time on any of these 4 critical gears once you get the cam gears separated from the cams. I've had the cams out of the car 4 different times using a quasi-evomoto procedure ( http://evomoto.com/tech_info.php?tPa...7e895bd74120af ), and knew I could get the cam gears off and zipped tied and bungee corded to the open roof in such a way as not to screw up the timing. avoiding the need to go through the full blown procedure of the timing belt. Yes, I've replaced the timing belt on my car twice, and think it's a pita, that's one of the reasons I went with the rope method also.

This procedure can be done totally from the top of the car. I think it saves a little time. I searched evom, and some have talked about this method being used on other cars (hondas, supras), but couldn't find anyone who's done it on an evo. I'm 1 for 1, no lost keepers, no out of time balance shaft, everthing went as expected. So either I'm a lucky cheap ba$tard, or this method is viable.

Has anyone else tried this?

 

This is how I did mine about 2 months back, worked great! My timing belt is a breeze (no balance shafts to worry about....hehe)



~Zach