That sounds like fuel starvation, not limiter.


Great write-up!

 

Great writeup.. Is it possible to check for the cracked retainers by simply pulling off the valve cover and moving the rockers out of the way?.. Just making sure because when i go to check out a car to buy i want to be able to check this.

 

You will be able to see a clearly bad one, but one that has just started to crack will be very hard to detect.

Cracked (badly) on the left. Good on the right. Notice that the cotters appear to be deeper inside the retainer on the left. That's really the only indication from up top.



Once removed, here's what the retainer on the left looked like:

 

While I'm replacing the retainers, anything else I should do while I'm in there? Are the hardtopguy replacement 04-09 retainers at about $130 a good complete set, and at a reasonable price?

 

What if I don't have an air compressor to pressurize the cylinders? I have a magnetic pick up tool. Is it hard to grab a valve that falls? What about if it falls when the piston is all the way down?

 

No air hose? Here's a trick we use on piston aircraft engines.

Take a 5 foot long piece of soft cotton rope (like 1/4" or so), and thread it through the spark plug hole down into the cylinder while the piston is part way down (don't put the whole thing in there, hang on to the end!).

Now turn the crankshaft to bring the piston upwards, which will push the rope against the valve, holding it up on the seat. When you're done, turn the crank a bit to release the rope and pull it out.

 

I used some clear vinyl tube wedged in the cylinder (as above) to support the valves. Air hose just had wayy too many attachments to watch after, and with the tube you can hear for the cotters "releasing" better.

I used an autozone valvespring compressor with the tabs buzzed off. It's bottom finger parts were too small to reliably keep the spring compressed, so I would suggest finding a spring compressor with the biggest fingers you can to grab that spring confidently. Only use this one if you can modify parts well.


Also I used a metal tooth scraper tool a lot for delicate nudging of various parts, so have something sharp, pointy, and maybe bent at hand.

You can also do this without supporting the valves. If at TDC for that cylinder the valves won't fall away from you that easily, and def won't fall into the cylinder. The hardest part by far is managing those cotters.

 

is it okay to replace the exhaust side with ap2 retainers using the stock springs?

 

^ yes

 

I've got a lot of clatter, presumably from the valvetrain, on my car at idle. Hot, cold, whatever, plenty of clatter. I've got 72k miles, it's an '03, and aside from fluids/filters and a PCV valve haven't done anything to the car. I also tend to burn a fair amount of oil (say, 1-1.5qts every 5k miles or so.) I recently switched from M1 to Valvoline Syntec full synthetic, and my usage has gone down some (hard to say since I only changed it about 2k miles ago.)

I was thinking of taking it (somewhere) for a valve adjustment, but now I'm wondering if I should go ahead and have the retainers done instead/at the same time. Is it one of things where a shop would adjust the valves as part of replacing the retainers? Would that not be part of the normal procedure? And could my oil usage be related to the valves being out of adjustment?

Lastly, I'm in Crystal Lake, IL, same as GT Motoring (a site sponsor.) Would they be a good place to take the car for this stuff, or should I go to the dealer (Brilliance in Crystal Lake)?