Valve Adjustment Question

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E

Exodus

Junior Member
I have a 91 Civic hatch DX.
Z6 block
Y8 head\intake
Gude Stage 1 Cam
AEM Cam Gear

It's in need of a valve adjustment and I proceeded to start it tonight without yet successfully shutting the little bastards up. Before I go any further, I'm not new to doing valve adjustments, I have been through auto. tech. school (Honda PACT specifically), I've just not been dabbling with cars in about a year now and can't quite remember what I used to know.

I have a couple of questions\concerns about my situation and the procedure for it:

- The cam gear is advanced 2 degrees, should it be set to zero for a proper valve adjustment? Does the cam like it there or something?

- The rocker arms have the slightest amount of up and down play. That bugs the hell out of me cause I'm trying to do something that uses a feeler gauge and needs to be precise. Same goes for the "slight drag" bullshit. Anyway, should the 007. and .009 measurements be taken with the arms at the top of their slack, or at the bottom?

If that sounds confusing, imagine the rocker arm hanging over the tip of the valve stem. When you slide the feeler gauge in, it pushes the rocker arm up, there's a little slack there. Now, I've been wondering if I should hold the arm up with a spare finger, measure, and set the adj. screw based on the clearance with the slack of the arm taken out going up, or if I should set the adj. screw based on the clearance of pushing down on the rocker arm and taking and measurement and adjusting.

I know this sounds really OCD, but I'm basically thinking this is one of those little things thats not in manuals or classes that you just pick up from years of doing the shit and having done three valve adjustments already and they are still ticking is really getting old.

Soo yeah. Oh, one of the three allen bolts on the AEM gear is stripped, any suggestions on how to get that one out? :D
 
this is the way i do it.

when i adjust for clearance, i adjust to make sure there is no slack whatsoever when i pop the feeler gauge in - hence a slight drag. you shouldnt be able to move the rocker up and down.

why not use a dremel and cut a line in the bolt? then you can screw it out.
 
I was talking to a few guys with 4Gs tonight about it and I seem to remember one of them talking about the cam gear issue. I don't remember exactly what he said (we were at Frickers, it was loud), but I think it had something to do with the gear was probably advanced during assembly to compensate for the difference of having a Y8 head on a Z6 block and the teeth being off between the separate motors.

Now, that reminds me of when I used to research a little on LS|VTEC and figuring out the general rule of always matching the accesory side of the engine to itself. Such as, your using a GSR head on a B18B block. You would make sure everything belt driven (including the belt) was GSR (or TypeR) because of the differences in deck height etc... thus, if everything matched, the system works properly.

Could I change out all of the belt driven stuff on the front of the motor to Y8 parts and use a Y8 belt to avoid any further issues?

I finally finished up adjusting the valves after deciding to give up on it until I have some more time\daylight. I have less ticking than I started after three rounds, sort of. Sounds now like I have maybe 1 or 2 less valves making noise, but the ones the have been ticking seem a touch louder.

I'm thinking that the way I set the motor to TDC for each cylinder prior to each round of adjustments per cylinder may have had something to do with the slight bit of upward and downward slack in the rocker arms during the adjustment. I only went off of three things (shoulda been four if I recall correctly) to verify I was exactly at TDC before the adjustments started.

1) Used the marks on the cam gear (but only really eyeballed where the marks shoulda been, I normally make sure the exhaust side one is as even as possible with the slant of the head) and basically just eyeballed the orientation of the four marks (don't know precisely what all of them should be aligning with).

2) Took the dizzy cap off to see which plug wire the rotor was pointing at (corresponds with the cylinder at TDC)

3) Used a telescoping magnet through the spark plug holes to see if the piston was at the top.


When the manual said crank the engine counterclockise 180 on the crank, I used 90 degrees on the cam gear because I couldn't very well see the crank pulley or monitor the location of the TDC marks all the way around, as well as not being able to find the damn mark on the t-belt cover to match it up with when I could see em. The step I left out was making sure the crank pulley was aligned with said mark... Dark garages suck.

I'm think that I had each cylinder at TDC... ish, like, I've been there before where most of the stuff lines up by eyeballing it, but checking to make sure all of the alignment points were squared would've been better. So, I think the possible slight out of position each piston might've been (but close to TDC), that the valve train wasn't perfectly set to where it was supposed to be, allowing minor slack in the rocker arms allowing them to pivot very slightly.

That pivot is annoying as hell during adjustment. The idea that the arm holding the adjustment screw could move when you slide a feeler gauge in between the screw and the tip of the valve stem is bothering me. I'm thinking they wouldn't move if the motor was set PRECISELY to TDC. I'm thinking if I looked at the crank pulley and made sure that mark was perfectly in line, the shit woulda been solid. But I still am wondering about the cam gear too and if it should been zeroed instead of advanced 2 notches.

I'm wiggin out man, I'm gonna browse the forums for a minute.
 
I'm pretty sure my current configuration is as follows:

Y8 head\intake manifold
OBD0 Si distributor
Y8 Gude Stage 1 Cam (I THINK, MAY be a Z6)
Y8 AEM Tru Time Cam gear (this MAY be a Z6 piece, any part numbers that can identify this?)
I BELIEVE the timing belt is a Y8, I would think the Z6 would be too short.
All of the belt driven parts should be Z6 on the block
Z6 block, completely stock

I would think this setup would work well:
Everything belt driven = Y8, mated to the Z6 block
Cam\gear still Y8 pieces

As far as the motor would know, it's a Y8 then, and then everything would match properly, come together properly, and fit properly. Then I wouldn't have to worry about anything being advanced or retarded to compensate for the mix matched parts either. I know this works for LS|VTEC, but is the same true on the D-motors?

Regarding the valve adjustment\cam, if the valve train were going to be noisy with the cam, the whole thing would make noise, evenly, no valve ticking louder than another. Currently, almost all of the valve train is quiet, except a few valves on or near #1. It sounds like the exhaust valves are the worst, and maybe one of the intake valves is out of adjustment. I don't hear any ticking anywhere else in the head, or it may be drowned out by the worst few. I do hear valve train noise that sounds like it may be from the upgraded cam, but it sounds more indicative of that, and less like a valve actually ticking. Just other hardware chattering (but not sounding like something possibly bad\wrong, if you can understand what I mean).

I think what I'm going to do on the second round of valve adjustments goes like this:

Apply downward pressure to the rocker arm while taking the valve clearance measurements, which would effectively create a situation where the closest the adj. screw and the valve stem will come together is the spec, and the furthest they can be from each other is due to the slight amount of slack. This way, if it's going to be out of spec at all due to the slack, it's going to be too loose instead of too tight. Looser specs in the case uses a little more gas, but wouldn't cause catastrophic failure in the engine, whereas if I set the specs with the arm lifted up, it can get closer to the valve without the slack, thus the tolerance is too tight. Tighter tolerances can burn up the valves\casue a lean condition and hurt the engine.

Ewww... for once in life loose is better, lol

I don't have a cutting\grinding tool right now to resolve the cam gear issue. I'm going to have to leave it 2 dashes from 0 advanced (what are those units of measurement on an AEM gear? I only see numbers, dashes, and adv\ret, but most of the gear is painted. Are those degrees?)

Ugh, D-series never gave me anything but lip. If I recall, this is why I bought a B16A a long time ago, lol
 
I'm not missing a bolt, one of the three allen bolts on the AEM cam gear are stripped (where you put the allen wrench, not the threads).

One of the other members recommended that I use a Dremel or some kind of grinding wheel to cut a slit in the bolt head so I can use a larger flat-head screw driver to twist it out and replace it. I wouldn't drive a car that's missing a bolt on the cam gear.

The drivetrain noise from the cam is kind of a "whirring" sound created by the rocker arms\other parts. It's not the ticking of the valves though, and it's not causing me to do any more or less work in the valve adjustments, I can differentiate the "spare noise" from what I need to hear to get the job done properly.

You know, everytime people link me to service manuals, or I look in my own, all I ever see in valve adjustment pictures are the screw driver and wrench hanging out on the locknut and adj. screw, while the feeler gauge is HANGING in between the screw and the valve.

Let's just say, in real life, you were to leave those tools on top of the rocker arm while your sliding the feeler gauge to measure. The weight of the tools would be holding the arm down, like I was talking about. I just don't like that they have slack in the rocker arms enough that the feeler gauge can raise the arm the adjustment screw is holding when you slide it in. That's just not right to me, so I'm gonna hold it down so the closest the screw can ever get is the tightest allowable spec by Honda, and otherwise be just a hair loose if anything. Then I'll sleep at night lol.
 
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