Stuck Valve, New Approach?

Working on a 36 John Deere D we picked up about a year ago. All original paint, but appears to have been worked on/cobbled together at one point. I like original paint tractors so we picked it up. Hadn?t run for several years. Got it home and among other things had a stuck exhaust valve on #1 side. Pulled valve cover (which doesn?t allow much to see on these for those who haven?t seen one) and sprayed down good. Pulled spark plug and sprayed from that side as well. Then we let it set with another round of two of spraying for a year or so.

On these tractors you can tap the valve down via pry bar, but can?t really get ahold of it to pull back up.

After some thought, and trying a couple other things, we came up with this. Drilled a hole at the balance point in a deep well socket. Then hooked some baling wire in it and made a stop. Then dropped it in the hole and flipped it 90 degrees. Turned the motor over and bumped the valve up with the piston (by hand). Move socket out of the way, turn over, spray, repeat, repeat, repeat....

I did pick up a cheap borescope a few weeks ago, not sure we could have seen enough to make this work without it. I?ll post a couple pics. Socket dropped in bore. Piston up to socket. And valve pushed up.

Incredibly brilliant. Tough to do on a vertical engine, But possible with a bit of thinking. bore scope, a 1/16 aircraft cable, and a 5/16" rod. Not too good on popup pistons. Sometimes a 30 inch piece of clothsline rope will also work. Jim

Try this...

With the spring removed chuck the valve stem (in the keeper area) TIGHTLY in the chuck of a good 1/2" variable speed drill.

Use the drill to rotate the valve and pull it out and push it in while it's rotating and you spray solvent on the stem.

It will be loose in 5 minutes or less.

Bob, not a bad idea, but he s going to need a bigger drill for a John Deere D, they have 5/8 stems.

The next issue after all this fussing around is the valve won t seal because of a rusty crusty valve seat.

Sometimes your time ahead to just pull the head and fix it right.

the best and proper thing is to just pull the rad and head . then a person can work on it with ease removing the valves and cleaning rust out of guide bores and lubing them up. just loosening the valves keeps the rust in there and then guides wear fast and good chance they will stick once hot when running. it also gives you a chance to inspect the valves and seats as they may need grinding. I have seen many of those old valves used for draw pins. lol.

Have heard of stuffing the spark plug hole and combustion chamber with some heavy cord or light rope with the piston down, then slowly rotating the piston up. Cord/rope compacts and pushes up the valve. Leaving one tail of the cord/rope hanging out, once you release the piston, just pull the cord out. Never tried. Seems like it'd work.