[Gregski]

folks needless to say I have gotten better at disassembling these heads, what has taken me an hour per head, now takes 10 minutes, I kid you not

partly because I have learned / tried another old school way of removing the valve springs (now I knew about this but it don't work on old gunky heads)

here is all you need to remove valve springs

1. 11/16ths (or suitable socket)

2. 3 lbs sledge (or similar)

now you don't even have to whack the top of the spring with this, just bounce the hammer on it if you will, soft - hard - soft - hard, and the retainer fall right out

in my case the springs didn't even go flying across the garage they did nothing really, the retainers just fell of, and I lifter the springs with my hand and put them in a zip loc bag