s2klariat

So did that piece of the valve just turn into dust or did it cause cylinder damage?

speedjunky01

it pretty much turned into little metal beads that stuck to the piston top. I cleaned it off and the car now runs great no scores or scrapes in the walls.

Billman250

Biggest issue is finding no clearance on the valves. This is why they burnt.

In my book, the 100k service interval for the valve adjustment is pathetic. If the va was done earlier, this would not have happened.

found 3 valves about .002 too tight on a 2002 car today. Little preventative maint saved the guys engine.

tan0116

Another member in TX also had the same issue as me after 60k miles. No prior valve inspection or adjustments done and found tight valves. I had no indication other than the car running rough and stalling. It all makes sense now why it was hard to start after those instances when it stalled.

Honda should really look into informing S2K owners to check their valve clearances at 35k or 50k rather than the recommended 100k or excessive valvetrain noise.

joes sled 2000

Honda is trying to keep the running costs down on all of their newer cars . Its a good selling point for them . The maintenance minder shows this . I see cars come in all the time with almost no oil in them and the minder system tells the owner that the oil life is still at 50% . Its really ashame ! I tell everyone to ignore what Honda says and do oil changes and such at a typical mileage interval (valve adjustments every 30k) .

Working_Class_S

I have my header off from removing the trans. How do my valves look? Also, is .002 to tight enough to damage the engine?

tan0116

I suggest checking compression and getting a leak down test if you only had .002" of clearance. Do you really have a feeler gauge that measures .002"?

Maybe Bill will chime in with his opinion. I see you have a slight a color difference between the two valve stems in the second picture but can't really conclude anything unless the valves are removed. Can you also tell us how many miles you have on the motor and if a valve adjustment was done in the past. It would be helpful to others to see at what mileage valves are tightening on these motors. The only other motor I can think off that tightens up valve clearances are in some B-series.

Good luck.

-Brian

Working_Class_S

Bought car at 20k, adjusted valves at 45k when the VSA and triangle light came on. Adjusting the valves fixed the light. The orange valve you see was at .004. It was my tightest valve. Now I have 68k and I have adjusted my valves every 8k miles since the first adjustment. Most of the valves don't need adjustment but can sometimes be .001 too tight or loose.

I only took pictures of the 2 sketchiest looking cylinders, but the rest of my exhaust valves look frosty white with no orange or gray.

tan0116

[/quote]
Bought car at 20k, adjusted valves at 45k when the VSA and triangle light came on. Adjusting the valves fixed the light. The orange valve you see was at .004. It was my tightest valve. Now I have 68k and I have adjusted my valves every 8k miles since the first adjustment. Most of the valves don't need adjustment but can sometimes be .001 too tight or loose.

I only took pictures of the 2 sketchiest looking cylinders, but the rest of my exhaust valves look frosty white with no orange or gray.
[/quote]


You maybe ok. I had zero clearance is the same valves of each cylinder. I would think gray is a normal color because that's how normal spark plugs look.

Exhaust valves:
X O | X O | X O | X O

Diagrammatically the X = zero clearance and the O = slightly tight valves in my case.

SpitfireS

Maybe its different in Europe, in this screenshot of a Dutch Honda ESM it shows to check valve clearance ( = klepspeling inspecteren) every 45k km (= 27k miles) or every 24 months, whatever comes first.
In my German owners manual it spec'd to "Ventielspiel überprüfen" every 40k km. / 24 months.

So 100k miles (= 160k km) is ... a lot

In a Helms pdf copy ( I found) it says to "Adjust only if noisy".