has anyone done a valve adjustment on their car yet?

[chunky]

I need one badly, it sounds like a tapdancing class on speed under the hood.

I would take it into honda to have it done, but I have an inherent mistrust of dealership mechanics.

can anyone throw up the pages from the helms manual that describe the procedure? :D I'm gonna buy one soon I swear, but I think there may be a special tool I need to buy to do the adjustment, and if i get the manual first, I can't afford the tool =\.

anyone?

[Gibhunter]

Take it to the dealer. It will be covered under warranty. These cars are supposed to run 110,000 miles before their first tuneup.

[JSIR]

since our cars are so under-cammed, I wanted to do a valve adjustment and tighten down the clearances to the low side of the spec - make the cams act larger than they are. Unfortunately I couldnt get things to work when I took off the valvecover. So I also need the shop manual which I hope to get very shortly. I am pretty sure my vtec adjustment tool from my last car works on this one too. All the timing marks are different now with these k20 engines compared to the old b-series , so a shop manual is necessary.

[chunky]

Originally posted by JSIR
since our cars are so under-cammed, I wanted to do a valve adjustment and tighten down the clearances to the low side of the spec - make the cams act larger than they are. Unfortunately I couldnt get things to work when I took off the valvecover. So I also need the shop manual which I hope to get very shortly. I am pretty sure my vtec adjustment tool from my last car works on this one too. All the timing marks are different now with these k20 engines compared to the old b-series , so a shop manual is necessary.

be careful about tightening down the clearances too much - you NEED some space for the oil to properly coat between parts. also, tightening the clearances doesn't increase max lift at all, it just makes the timing of the valve events more accurate - the gap only exists when the valve is fully closed - changing that gap just means that it will respond more quickly to the cam when the fat side of the lobe starts to come around resulting in more accurate timing, reducing the chances of floating a valve.

[myeverlovinsir]

good point chunky. I was speaking with a lead rep. from JRP
today about cam swapping and he thinks that a standard billet
and some dims would give him enough ammo to get us there with
larger cam lobes. Somewhere in the 1000 bucks range. Any thoughts?

[JSIR]

tightening the valve clearances can get you a tiny bit more duration out of the cam depending on how loose it started out at. I would just take it down to the tight end of the Honda spec and make sure that all the clearances are equal or consistent.

Glen (myeverlovinsir), don't put any faith in the guys at JRP when it comes to cams and engine specs, they are notoriously wrong when it comes to such things. I installed a set of cams for a guy on his b16a recently, he bought them from JRP. They told him the cams were bigger than Integra Type R cams and quoted him 15-20 hp gains. Before I installed them we measured the lobes and found that they were smaller than ITR cams. I doubt he got more than 2hp gains out of the cams, they were called Cat Cams and were the worst quality cams that I had ever seen. Terrible stuff, he would have been much better off with ITR cams than the junk they sold him, felt sorry for him.

[chunky]

Originally posted by JSIR
tightening the valve clearances can get you a tiny bit more duration out of the cam depending on how loose it started out at. I would just take it down to the tight end of the Honda spec and make sure that all the clearances are equal or consistent.

Glen (myeverlovinsir), don't put any faith in the guys at JRP when it comes to cams and engine specs, they are notoriously wrong when it comes to such things. I installed a set of cams for a guy on his b16a recently, he bought them from JRP. They told him the cams were bigger than Integra Type R cams and quoted him 15-20 hp gains. Before I installed them we measured the lobes and found that they were smaller than ITR cams. I doubt he got more than 2hp gains out of the cams, they were called Cat Cams and were the worst quality cams that I had ever seen. Terrible stuff, he would have been much better off with ITR cams than the junk they sold him, felt sorry for him.

about the clearances, i guess it's possible that duration may be slightly affected, since the valve would be actuated quicker by the cam lobe when opening. since closing is determined by the springs, the valves would close the same regardless of clearances. It should only produce a noticeable effect if clearances are severly out of spec.