Do It Yourself Repairs for Home, Car, Truck, Computer.: Cheapest Homemade Small Block Chevy V8 Valve Spring Compressor, $9.00

Hi All,

I believe I just made the world's cheapest homemade small block Chevy V8 Valve Spring compressor. It took me about a half hour and it works great! Home made tools are the best! Here are the parts you need to make it from:

Harbor Freight 8" C-Clamp $5.99
Harbor Freight 7/8" Socket - Deep $2.99

8" C-Clamp and 7/8" Socket - Deep

Here are the tools I used to make it:

Drill Press
4" Grinder with cut-off blade
1/4" endmill
1/4-20 tap

Here are the steps I used to make it followed by the pictures:

Mark socket wall for cutting and cut with grinder using a metal cut-off wheel. I cut out two of the flats to create the opening and cut right before the thick wall started on the inside of the socket for the height. I also had to shorten the socket by 1/4" to make it fit better to the heads. I cut the extra off at the socket opening
Take your C-Clamp over to your drill press and clamp it to your table upside down as shown. My drill press is the larger table top one from Delta so I was able to do this easily. Small drill presses may have problems with this.
Move your table into position so that you can cut a flat directly inline with the clamp screw and tighten it into position. I eyeballed it and it worked fine.
Then you break the golden rule of never putting an end mill in your drill chuck just this once. Tighten your drill chuck in all three holes of the chuck with your chuck key.
Make sure your drill press is set at its slowest speed since you are cutting cast iron. Then, slowly and I mean slowly move the endmill down so it cuts a flat onto the curved surface of the C-Clamp. You only need enough of a flat to start a drill hole.
Next remove the endmill and try and insert a small drill without moving your table. This allows you to drill on center of the flat you just made.
Drill you hole starting with a small diameter and end up with a .201" through hole.
Chamfer the edges of your .201" diameter hole and then tap it using a 1/4-20 tap.
Get a 2" long screw and some washers and mount your cut out socket to your C-Clamp to create your $9.00 Chevy V8 Valve Spring Compressor. I already had the taps and screws lying around.

One final note on construction of this tool, if you don't have a drill press or a large enough one you can still create a flat on the curved surface of the c-clamp using a file. You can then clamp it down upside down and drill by hand. A little harder to do but definitely doable.