The Parts Bin: Cummins Valve Spring Upgrades

In our latest visit to The Parts Bin, we’re covering Cummins valve spring upgrades. These are some very budget friendly upgrades you can make to your Cummins diesel truck.

The first thing we’re looking at is the very common, very popular Cummins 60lb valve spring. This is probably the best bang-for-your-buck valve spring. It’s readily available, very reliable, and priced very reasonably. They can be used for a lot of power and RPMs.

The biggest downside to these springs is that they do not come with new locks and retainers. These are designed by Cummins for exhaust side only and reuse your factory hardware. The factory locks work great for their intended purpose, which is low-RPM, stock truck use. Using the factory locks with high-RPM applications, the lock will eventually start to pull through the retainer.

If you want to upgrade the hardware for the Cummins 60lb springs, you can do that. However, the hardware that works with these springs at higher RPMs is quite expensive. All in, you might spend $500 or more for springs and hardware. But, we have a solution – tool steel retainers and locks.

Our tool steel hardware is much stronger than the stock material and a little lighter. These also use a 10 degree lock, instead of the standard 7 degree. This makes these much harder to pull through the spring and creates better upgrade for your valve spring.

In addition to better materials, we wanted to make the spring better too. When you use our retainer and lock, it compresses the spring slightly more than the stock hardware. This increases the seat pressure of the spring. All of this combined allows us to recommend these springs and hardware up to about 750hp and 4,200RPM.

What does all this mean for your wallet? The tool steel hardware retails for around $200. Add the $150 Cummins spring and you’re now into a reliable set of valve springs for right around $350. That’s about $200 less than a set of canonical springs.

Pick up a set of your own here: https://powerdriven.wpengine.com/?product_cat=&s=hardened+chromoly+spring&post_type=product

If you have questions about these springs, or any other parts for your diesel engine, give us a call at 435-962-9555 or text us at 435-962-9506 or leave us a comment below. Don’t forget to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram for more product tests. Leave us a comment below about what you’d like us to cover next.