DrakeValle

Yeah I'm pretty positive it's valves. I had been trying to figure out the ticking noise, which sounded like it was coming from the TCT area. I'm now thinking it was valve tick. If there was a burnt/bent exhaust valve on cylinder 1, would it tick around the exhaust side of the head near cylinder 1?

I'm going to pull the valve cover tonight and just see what I can see. I'm guessing I'll need to pull the head to inspect it all properly, but I want to do another leak down at my dad's shop and that won't happen till this weekend.

DeeKay

when you have the leakdown tester on and pressure hooked up do you hear air coming from the exhaust, throttle body, oil cap? the air escaping has to be going somewhere.

DrakeValle

As I said in post 9, on cylinder 1, air was leaking out exhaust. On the other cylinders, I could not find any leakage. What seems to be happening, is that when connecting the leakdown tester, the compressors output pressure is dropping due to a leak in the compressor.

Like I said, I'll be doing the test again with a much better compressor. If I get the same results then I know that it wasn't a problem with the compressor, and there might be more going on in the engine then I thought.

Gottabfast

So at that point your loss % isn't accurate, but the air coming out of the exhaust valve tells you what you need to know. Pull the valve cover and see what the damage is. Is the valve dropped or just bent, retainers cracked, condition of cams, metal shavings, etc. Now you're just trying to find the extent of the damage.

DrakeValle

I pulled the valve cover last night and began inspecting everything.

As far as I can tell, the cams seem to be fine. The retainers did not appear to have any cracks or bending (as far as I can tell). I did check valve clearance on cylinder 1 and one of the exhaust valves was pretty tight. .008 had a decent amount of drag, .010 wouldn't go in.

I'm going to inspect further tonight/tomorrow.

DrakeValle

Just a small update. Finally go a hold of a guy that was a mechanic at Honda for a long time.

A painter at my dad's shop is a Honda nut, and he said this guy is the man when it comes to Honda's. I called him and asked him a couple questions but mostly let him do that talking to get a feel for him. He basically just reiterated everything I have been reading for the last couple months, but would like to pull the valve cover and take a look.

Going to call him back Wednesday and see about taking it over to him.

DrakeValle

Taking the car to Fusionworks here in Wichita to have them diagnosis the issue and see if they can tell me exactly what it is and how much they will charge to fix it.

Not my first choice, but everyone else that I was told to take it to has retired and really wasn't wanting any side work right now.

Just ready to have someone tell me what exactly is wrong and get it fixed.

DrakeValle

Another update.

Fusionworks agreed that is a bent/burnt exhaust valve. They quoted me right around $1800. $800 for labor, $450 for the machine shop, ~ $500 for parts.

That is for a full valve job. They'll be doing the AP2 retainers on the intake side.

Price is right around what I expected to be paying. I could possibly save a little cash buying the parts with my dads discount at Honda, but I'll probably just let them handle everything. They can't get it in for about 2 weeks though. Just glad to be moving forward.