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General Category >> Rubber Side Down! >> My Valve Adjustment/Tensioner Story
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Message started by adberns on 07/17/11 at 07:49:52

Title: My Valve Adjustment/Tensioner Story
Post by adberns on 07/17/11 at 07:49:52

Alright, thanks to the excellent help here on this board, we've (hopefully) brought the old girl back from the dead. As you may recall, the tensioner was totally shot. Yesterday, we went ahead and put in the new one, cleaned up the gasket surfaces really good, and put everything back together.

Then went ahead and adjusted the valves. That was interesting. The PO had taken it to a mechanic, who apparently had replaced the head gasket. The head cover was sealed up with a huge amount of goop - it spilled over on both sides. We decided to leave it alone. However, when we looked at the valves, he had put some of the putty between one of the adjustment screws and the valve!! :o Sounds like a really classy mechanic. We got the putty out and tightened the valve just a bit. We suspect he put it there to quiet it down instead of tightening like you should. Man, I gotta say it's impressive how little of a touch is required to move the valves. We moved them all to 0.004 - the exhausts were a tad tight, the intakes were a tad loose, but nothing moved more than like 1/8th of a turn - probably not even. Crazy!

Anyway, got it buckled back together. Started her up. Man, it runs so much quieter! I'm actually a little nervous that we went too tight. However, we adjusted them, rotated the engine a few times, and checked them again, and they were all in spec. Just a barely audible tic. From the talk here, I thought spec'd valves would clatter like crazy. Last thing left to do is to verify we don't have an oil leak from the clutch cover gasket, and then paint the body!

Thanks to everyone on the board for the help!