Ok, so I pulled the valve cover off my driver side to investigate a POSSIBLE noise I thought I might have been hearing and to check my infamous comp 918s (which will be comin off as soon as the patriots golds arrive)....

The springs all look to be intact and the locks and retainers are all perfect, BUT the further forward spring on #7 (i dunno which is intake and which is exhaust :p) appears to be off center underneath the retainer....

Viewed from DEAD straight above, all the others seem to be more or less centered under the retainer.

The rocker tip on this #7 valve is still centered over the valve stem (so i don't think the valve is bent) but the top coil (just under the section that flattens out to seat to the retainer) is almost completely visible on one side, and really not at all on the opposite, where all the others have about the outer half of the coil visible out past the retainer.

The strange part is that the flat portion of the top coil is more or less centered against the retainer and the bottom of the spring looks to be pretty much centered against the spring seat.

The best way I can describe it is that it appears the spring is either slightly out of round starting halfway down the top coil, or the spring is actually compressed "out to one side" a little.

My digital camera software isn't loaded up on the comp yet, so here's a quick and dirty MSpaint to give somewhat of an idea what i'm talking about...(left is the way the other seven look, right is this strange one)




Is this a problem? the motor actually does seem to sound pretty much the same on both sides when I put my ear right up to each valve cover and the car seems to run normally.....what's going on here?

 

That's highly unusual. The design of the top coil of the spring and the bottom of the retainer is supposed to prevent this. The boss on the bottom face of the retainer should force the spring to sit concentrically under the retainer. The spring/retainer must have been assembled improperly. This should have been caught during installation. You would think it would have snapped into place after a few miles, but since it didn't it would only take you a few minutes to compress that one spring and center it under the retainer.

 

Apparantly the spring is almost definitely broken at the retainer seat!!!

Someone posted in my other recent thread in this section (the 918 springs thread) with pictures of EXACTLY what my situation looks like.

He had 10 springs sitting shifted like mine....they all had the top coil broken....

 

It's hard to believe an engine could hold together with 10 of 16 springs brokern without a catastrophic engine failure, but it's also hard to deny the photographic evidence. I think I'm still somewhat in denial though in that I can accept one spring as in you case maybe two, but 10 broken springs in a high performance engine running big lift and duration numbers at high RPM stretches the limits of credulity. There's not much doubt your spring is broken based on the pictures. You need to replace the entire set. Time to buy the Vinci/Crane tool.