Yes!

[California98Civic]

Glee, man. I am on the road again. Completed: valve lash/clearance adjustments, timing belt and tensioner replacement, one engine mount replaced, helicoil fix of a stripped valve cover bolt housing. Partially completed: oil pan gasket replace and undertray/diffuser build. I actually have hardware for the undertray framing and mounting hanging under the car, and some of the panels are cut, including the diffuser. Too much repair, too many snags, too many little errors to correct.

Glad that's done. Car runs slightly differently: low idle (550-600 a lot of the time) and high alt output when I ran it (13.9 volts alot of the time).

[user removed]

Sometimes they like to beat ya up before surrendering, but the outcome is inevitable.

regards
Mech

[Baltothewolf]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

Sometimes they like to beat ya up before surrendering, but the outcome is inevitable.

regards
Mech

Haha isn't that the truth.

I'm glad you got everything squared away CAcivic. I can't wait to do my VX tranny swap when it gets here on Tuesday.

[Xist]

The Pep Boys that replaced my timing belt told me that I needed a valve lash adjustment. The store manager of another Pep Boys told me to go back and have them fix my timing belt. They said the tensioner was defective. What was yours doing?

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by Xist

The Pep Boys that replaced my timing belt told me that I needed a valve lash adjustment. The store manager of another Pep Boys told me to go back and have them fix my timing belt. They said the tensioner was defective. What was yours doing?

This was scheduled maintenance. The manual recommends a valve check every 12 or 15,000 miles and I hadn't done it in 110,000. The timing belt replacement is 60-90,000 and I hadn't done it in 110,000.

But when I got in there, I found a couple valves far too tight and most tighter than they could be. And the timing belt, while in solid shape in general showed some very minor cracking that must mean stretching too. Both of those will effect emissions a little to a lot, depending.

And if the timing belt snapped... bye bye engine.

Of course, do the timing belt incorrectly and it's also bye bye engine... so I'm glad I checked and re-checked...

[digital rules]

Originally Posted by California98Civic

But when I got in there, I found a couple valves far too tight and most tighter than they could be.

Interesting, I always thought valve clearances would loosen over time as parts wear & noise would increase? Also thought if valve clearances are adjusted too tight, the risk of burnt valves increases due to inadequate heat transfer to the head?

[user removed]

Valve lash checks are a lot like tire balancing. With new tires you SHOULD rebalance within 5 kmiles. After that I always look for symptoms before rebalancing.

With a new engine the valves may not wear exactly evenly and one does not know how they were intitially adjusted as far as the range of acceptable specs. I would probably do a very careful valve adjustment at the first recommended interval, but I would set the valves to exactly the maximum spec, as long as I KNEW they would wear to a smaller spec. Once you did that the I would check them at twice the recommended interval and compare the specs to my original maximum adjustment.

Now you know what to expect. If your 30k (second @ 45k total) check showed no significant change in spec then you can predict foreward the mileage when that spec will indeed be at a minimum. My 73 Alfa GTV checked to EXACTLY 1 thousandth wear, 100,000 miles after the only adjustment it ever had, by me. An adjustment was an 8 hour job (pull the cams and buckets, measure shim and replace with correct dimension) I was not going to do if I could avoid it and I sold the car with that 100k old valve adjustment that was .001 under MAX spec on every valve.

Since most repair shops charge the same for a check versus an adjustment and knowing my VX's valves were all easily in spec at 62k without ever having been adjusted (did them when I sold the car), I think 15k valve "check" intervals are just lining some commission tech's pockets for 5 minutes work, removing the valve cover and using the minimum spec feeler gauge to quickly "check" versus adjusting to maximum.

regards
Mech

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by digital rules

... Also thought if valve clearances are adjusted too tight, the risk of burnt valves increases due to inadequate heat transfer to the head?

Apparently they tighten with wear. But my reading online seems to match yours: too tight means less heat transfer and a few other things not lovely. So I set them to MAX spec, which means they are set to the most loose position permissible. (I was conservative as to how I measured that on the feeler gauge because I was concerned about measuring poorly and having too loose and so my lash is likely slightly less than maximum.)

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

Now you know what to expect.

Yes, I do. And thanks for the tutorials on it.