PixelJunkie94

Hi guys, first I would like to thank everyone for contributing towards the helpful information in the DIY section of this forum. It gave me the confidence for me to tackle my first "in engine" job. With that said, I would love to hear/see some feedback of my engine noise. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhTG...ature=youtu.be). This is an AP1 with 78K miles, thanks for your feedback it is greatly appreciated!

Chris Brewer

99SH

The sensitivity and gains of microphones will make it impossible to evaluate your video, not to include the compression that Youtube adds.

If it runs great and doesn't sound any worse than before you touched it, job well done

zeroptzero

It sounds normal but as mentioned above it is really hard to tell on internet videos, you really have to be in front of the engine to effectively tell.

If this was your first valve adjustment ever I'd highly recommend that you go back and re-check the clearances a little bit down the road after driving it for a bit. You have to develop a feel for the amount of drag and how the angle of the feeler gauge can be mis-leading if you don't get it perfectly level with the top of the valve stem. If the clearances were too loose you would definitely hear it, too tight won't give you any symptoms. The "go" & "no-go" method is safe in that you won't mess it up in any way that will cause damage, but if you go back in there later on you can fine-tune the settings to get them more evenly set as you develop a feel for the process.

PixelJunkie94

Thanks for the replies! The method that I found that worked "OK" for my first time was similar to the go-no-go method. For example, the intake valves I would make sure that .008 was loosely snug, a .009 would be tight and .010 would not go. If that makes sense, thanks guys!

Chris Brewer

AZS2KDancer

This makes we wonder if there are go, no-go bent angle feeler gauges? Years ago, I had some go, no-go straight feeler gauges that worked great on my VW air-cooled engine.

zeroptzero

I have bent gauges. Mine have two handles and the blades are interchangeable on the handles. I've done this enough times that I only use one gauge for the exhaust and one gauge for the intake and set each valve as evenly as possible. I pretty much skip the go and no-go steps.

I find that if you don't get the gauge perfectly parallel with the stem of the valve you can get a false sense of drag (increased drag), so the bent gauges help reduce that false reading.

Car Analogy

He is asking about go, no go gauges (bent ones). These have 2 steps on each gauge. You adjust so the larger step does not fit, but the smaller step does.

They make these of course, but I don't know if they make bent ones.

Slowcrash_101

I guess that's where feel comes in. I just use a .010" bent gauge. I get it in, and use my fingers to make it flat on the retainer. Then I slide it around until I find the point with the least drag, I use that as my measurement. On the intake side, I adjust until there's a fair bit of drag but not so much that I struggle to slide it back and forth. On the exhaust I adjust until there's a little drag, just a little less than snug. I also leave the gauge while I tighten the lock nut, that way I can see if I moved the adjuster screw while tightening the lock nut. After tightening I move the rocker back and forth, I try to get them all to make the same noise on exhaust, and intake respectively. The pitch gets higher the looser the valve clearance, it gets lower the tighter it gets.

Apex1.0

That sounds completely normal to me.

When I did the valve adjustment on my J-series V6 (RL), I found all of the exhausts were tight and all of the intakes were loose. The valave noise was the same after the adjustment but the idle did smooth out a little. This was at 140K.

With 23k on the S2000, I was not sure to adjust them. I am going to pull the valve cover to inspect the retainers.