The “keepers” are exactly the same and never wear out. Just take one off the old head and install it onto the new valve stem

 

If you don't have an air compressor, the "poor man's way" is to lower the piston, shove a bunch of rope in the spark plug hole, then rotate the engine (by hand) until the piston compresses the rope against the valves to hold them up.

But I agree that there's no harm in using one of the old keepers. Just make sure it's properly seated.

 

Unfortunately I don't have the time to wait for a keeper to come in, so I used the old one and it seems fine. I'm usually one to replace these sorts of things, but I'm running out of time on this project and keepers would be another week out. And Christine_208 yes, I did; Luckily the cylinder I needed to put the keeper in was already at or near the top of it's stroke, so I pulled the valve core out of my compression tester and that worked fine. I didn't think to put the distributor in so hopefully I'm not too f'ed when it comes time to sort that all out. But the good news is I'm making progress again, just about to put the intake back on once I clean and sort out where the bolts are supposed to go...spilled the organizer marking where everything was supposed to go. Oops. Again, thanks everyone for your input, it's very helpful!

 

You reminded me of when I was hanging out with a friend when he and his brother-in-law were rebuilding the motor in his suburban. To pull the truck back into the garage using a come-along, they attached it to the cart that was holding all the bolts and gaskets. Of course it all spilled and this was on a dirt floor. He spent the night cleaning everything.

Hopefully, you spilling your parts will be the one thing that goes wrong and everything else goes well. (I always expect one thing to go wrong and always hope it is not a biggy. LOL)

 

Haha, plenty has gone wrong already but it could be worse. Lol I'd kill just to have a dirt driveway; I dropped a motor mount bolt and sifted through the gravel in my driveway for over an hour and never found it. I try not to have any optimistic thoughts at all while I'm wrenching because that's when I start breaking stuff

 

Adversity builds character.

 

What a journey! I'm lucky that when I had the same symptoms the problem was a bad radiator cap.

 

Well I'm almost done with reassembly. Thought I would finish today but I forgot to put the starter back in, which was impossible to do without tapping the thru bolt to the engine mount back and removing the exhaust manifold. Had a lot of fun with the power steering pump pulley too. Now all that's holding me back is the back of the driver's side head; I'm not sure where exactly the ground wires go and can't see a thing back there. I had an AllData diagram of it but can't find it, that website kinda sucks... But the moment of truth is approaching!

Haha If only it was just a radiator cap. I've built a lot of "character" the past couple days

Edit: found the diagram, hell yeah

 

Two months later, I did it!!!! I did the timing wrong and it took me about two weeks to correct the problem but with the help of this forum and a rarely functioning part of my brain, it's done! Thanks for all the input everyone, I'm extremely grateful. The engine purrs effortlessly around 500rpm, starts right up! Once I physically/emotionally/financially recover from this job, I'll start in on the cosmetic stuff. Feels like I've rebuilt this whole vehicle by now. Yeeeeeeehawwwww!

 

Congrats. So how was the timing wrong and what did you do to fix it?