"Clive, are you saying definitively that this is incorrect and if so which one (inlet or exhaust) should be fitted the other way around, please?"
Heaven forbid I should say anything definitive. The story goes as follows. Expat has a weird tap coming from the left hand side of his engine, his rockerbox cover shows a clear witness sign of the spring hitting the underside of the case. The owners manual and 2 workshop manuals have illustrations (all I suspect taken form the one source) which show the springs fitted one way. (that way being with the inner spring loop on the pushrod side). As pointed out against that is an explode engine drawing. I can confirm that the spring tangs were shorter for the earlier enclosed retaining plates and if fitted on an open later plate would allow rocking. Who knows the quality of 60 year old springs. If there was no tapping noise and no witness mark on the rockerbox I would leave well alone, and I too have fitted springs according to the wear in the plates.
I reckon Expat has to swop the springs round on his inlet side and report back as a service to members, after all he has A/C in his garage.
