Just a note: You drive at high altitude. Do the Gott's mod on your intake. Help your truck breathe. The air is thinner up there.

 

How many miles are on it?

You can do the valve springs in the truck. It sucks, but they can be done.

 

I got the valve cover off. Nothing looks suspicious so far. I didn't realize I'd need a $200 tool to get the valve springs out...

The caking of oil on the valve cover looks pretty asymmetric (heaviest by the cam gear). Is this normal? The scraping by cylinder 1 was me ham-fisting the cover during removal.

 

Looks alright to me.

 

Ok, made a timing chain wedge, got the cam off, got the 3 valve springs on cyl #1 off. The front intake spring is a little shorter uncompressed (~2.240" vs ~2.255" for the other two springs).

 

In a jury-rigged measuring device, the front intake spring was about 0.03" shorter under the same load than the rear intake spring and the exhaust spring (~1.84" vs ~1.87").

I pulled the valve seals, and they looked in good shape. The valves don't wiggle appreciably side to side with the seals out.

Should I consider new valve seals and springs on that cylinder? (Or would I be an idiot not to do all 4?)

Thanks!
fiz