My 2.4L is now a 1.8L ... Huh.

I'm home now, getting the coffee pot warmed up and mowing some grindage. I'll know something, maybe, in a half-hour or so.

You're right about the valve adjustment thing and my historically weak level of skill or aptitude for it, but I can't see how one cylinder would be so far off from the others -- especially since I did the adjustment twice to make sure it was right.

If I screwed them up that badly this time, I will be signing up for one of those apprentice-level mechanical skills classes at the community college; I'm pretty decent at the basics, and this is pretty basic. I might pick up on something simple.

Hopefully, whatever it is was wear and tear -- not me being a dummy.

OK, The suspense is killing us. What was dorked up?

~WB

Hopefully not the cam/lifter problem that I had....

Nothing to report yet. I'll be back on it in the morning. My mother-in-law, however, is safely installed in the house with fresh groceries, clean sheets and towels -- and no idea that I spent the morning prepping for her arrival instead of tearing into the car.

Verdampt.

She'll probably find out this evening when she rolls back those fresh sheets with the greasy paw prints. Keep the lights down low for bed time.

My mother-in-law came for a visit in 2007 and hasn't left yet.

Mystery solved. Rocker arm, number two cylinder. The shoulder bolts were stripped at the rocker end, leaving the assembly to just hang off the ends of the bolts after the nuts shook themselves off over time.

I can't post a picture from my phone (come ON, Theron!), so that'll have to wait until tomorrow.

The bolt was seated into the head well, but I replaced them nonetheless. Twenty bucks. Easy fix. Lots of other little stuff got sorted out today also.

"I'll have results before my mother-in-law arrives."


There's a t-shirt right there . . . .

Where did the nuts go?

We're right here, Mike.

Finally........

Half of "Speedster Folks of America" can stop holding their breath.

Say Hi! to your Mom-in-law for Kathy and me.



And I don't think Cory broke his valve spring doing anything like this:



"No, Officer........We weren't racing the guys from Beck while we were being towed."

I still hear a ticking I don't like, but the carbs are balanced and the valves are set at .003. Maybe late this week, I'll go back and loosen them up to .006 again, just on principle. No ugly noises this time, all the little bits are back in place and I'm going to visit with Teresa's mother instead of continuing to try to get this right.

I don't understand what I'm missing. I might have to get someone else to look at it. It irks me that I know how to do this, and it's still not sounding like it should. Irks is too mild a word; I'll take a couple days away from it and come back to it Friday with someone smarter than me to actually witness this stupid ticking.

Mike, they were sitting right in the bottom of the head. The washers, too. They didn't take a hike down the pushrods tubes or anything; plain as day, they were just sitting there. Crazy.

Take a step back from it and have a think. Review all the things you have comfirmed that happened,, and take a educated guess as to what to check next.. but sometimes you have to just stop and think about it and you will have somethinga stand out..

Oh Id inspect the push rod tips and the top of the lifters look for dammage.

Im hoping your cam was not hurt or chipped You could rotate the crank with one bank of lifters out and inspect all 4 lobes one by one to make sure they are unharmed Oh dont mix your lifeters Id use 4 paint markers red blue yellow white 1234 right to left

Glad to see you found the problem.... I've chased valve noises in VW engines and never found the cause.... Usually they were just tooooo loose... Sometimes, however, with all things seemingly OK, they were still noisy.... Soooooo ..... TORQUE this Corey... 8-)

Great pictures, Gordon! Thanks -- on Valentine's Day, even!

Here's the picture of the rocker, hanging off the studs. This is what I saw as soon as I cracked open the valve cover. Anybody see anything obvious that I'm missing, other than the nuts having completely walked off their threads?

I almost think I should clean the sleeves out with BraKleen and then Loc-Tite the new ones in. I installed the new studs yeaterday and ran the engine for about two minutes, but shut it down again after I started hearing that rythmic clicking. I have to take the covers off again to see if it's anything stupid.

Friday's the day. I'll open the floor to reasonable suspicions now ... Thoughts?

I think Barry's on to something - make sure you don't have any dinged push rods OR the rod seats on the far end of the rocker arms. Also, pull the rods and check the inner ends, too. Ya never know.

However:

Usually when there is a ticking, it means either the valves are set too loose or the rocker arm shaft studs/nuts (the ones you just replaced) are loose. Did you torque them to spec? Check 'em again.

The sound is different between a rocker shaft and a rocker arm, but I can't easily describe the difference - sorry. At idle, is it a single periodic tick, about once every 1/2-3/4 second or more like twice as fast as that? Slower is rocker arm, faster might be a loose shaft.

Also, there might be shims beneath the rocker arm shaft mounts to allow geometry set-up of the rockers to stems. Did you get them back in the same places? They might be different thicknesses at each end and are end-dedicated. Looking at your picture, there is a flat stand-off part of the head that the rocker shaft, end mount fits onto, and the facing side of the shaft mount looks flat, too. Your shaft ends look a bit different that what I'm using, but he shaft mount could have sat cocked when tightening and then popped into place and the shaft is now loose.

Lastly, you could start it up and idle with the valve cover off to "see" where the noise is coming from, and even, if you're careful, grasp the rockers one at a time to force the stem end tight against the valve stem to see if the clicking stops and then, "ah-HA!" That's the one!

If you have chromoly push rods you might be setting them too loose.

were the nut and washer just sitting in the valve cover?

Bolt it back together and back on the road. you have lots of kms/miles on the motor, no washing the cylinders shouldn't be too much of an issue assuming you didnt drive a lot once it made this problem.

And((( DO Check))) the other side for all of the same things if you find probems on the other bank of rockers.

I have a nother question how many miles on the engine, and if a lot?

Should Cory concider rechecking the touqre on the heads at this point? Im not saying he should Im just asking

It looks to me like I engineered this problem when I tried to make the Porsche-script valve covers work a month or so ago. I only removed the studs on the passenger's side of the car, and while I used the jam-nut method to take the front assembly off, I cheated on the back stud and it bit me in the pants.

I weakened the threads, taking metal off of them, and there wasn't as much surface contact with the nuts after re-installing them. The nuts just vibrated off the end, and stayed where they fell. I feel quite confident that there are not any deeper problems than that.

I do have the chromoly pushrods, and I have them set at .003 right now. I didn't drive the car more than it took to get home the night after my failed attempt at making those covers work and one trip to Fred McKenney's place with the rocker assembly presumably just hanging there on the ends of the studs, so I'm probably good to go.

Nonetheless, with my track record lately, I'll be taking it to a guy to have it looked over once. My confidence is shaken a bit by this turn of events, and I want the reassurance of someone else telling me I'm good before I go back to routine driving.

I feel like I dodged a bullet. Thanks for all the advice, guys.

Cory -- I enjoyed reading how this turned out. Like I said, never suspect the worst until you prove it to be so. In this case it looks like "no big deal", and the problem was obvious, just laying on the surface to see.

You ARE too loose on your rocker arm adjustment. Chromoly pushrods are set to .000 on cold engine. I set them so a .002 feeler won't go but I can still spin the pushrod rod freely with my fingers. So I figure that's about between .001 and .000.

Mark, thank you for that. I have always tried to keep my posts informative and somewhat entertaining, and it's not always fun to write about something I managed to screw up.

I'll be re-adjusting to a loose zero tomorrow, hopefully. My missus just got back from her trip, so the car may be put off until Friday. We shall see, but at least I know it all works again.

If you ever get to Washington, Mark, we'll go for a spin. Same goes for you other guys, too. Especially if you like to wrench. ;)

Now you see the reason why you'll NEVER see any valve cover on one of my engines that isn't OEM VW. I have built a 40 thousand dollar engine and equipped it with OEM stock VW valve covers in the past. I refuse to deviate.

Once upon a time I had an engine on my dyno that used the valve covers that attach like yours.. As it hit 7,800 RPM the fasteners broke and the rockers and valve cover flew off and bounced of the wall of the test cell.. I reacted with lightning speed shutting it down, BUT when all that oil dumps on the headers you are going to have a fire... Which I ended up with and had to deal with. That was the last time I ever used them.

Yes it is true. Looks can kill. Go play the lottery, you have a lucky streak underway.

As I said in the other post: old tune-up literature is pretty close to worthless when engines have been modified as much as ALL of ours have. VW didn't use chrome-moly push-rods, so the old-school tune-up literature doesn't apply.

.003 with CroMo pushrods will sound "ticky". .006 would sound like Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Loose zero. Set it, check it every oil change, forget it.

Nine Blau.

So I guess I get the prize, 'cause I said it was a REALLY loose valve, the equivalent of being "off-your-rocker" so to speak...

Right there with you Stan, loose zero on chromoly, spinning is winning, just like Charlie Sheen :)

I am happy to report that, after a six-hour shakedown, the 45 Dells and loose-zero valves in their checkered covers are working brilliantly. The Hoopty is once again ready for anything.

Yayyyee! Learn to lesson to your engine. when you drive it will tell you when it needs a tweek.

"I reacted with lightning speed shutting it down"

Yeah, I used to be like that.

Remember "Lightnin'" on the old Amos 'N Andy show??

That's pretty much me nowadays..........

gn

"Now you see the reason why you'll NEVER see any valve cover on one of my engines that isn't OEM VW." So what OEM VW parts bin are these from?
Just wondering?

Cory - Thanks for sharing this little episode. Not many of us would share our mistakes with the world. Hopefully, we will all be better prepared to deal with this problem if it happens to us.

Rich: those are not OEM

I realize that, Mango. My response was to Jake who built this engine. If I'm not mistaken the photo is taken on Jake's bench when the engine was about to ship. He's the one that said he NEVER uses anything but OEM VW valve covers. I was just wondering out loud. This must have been one exception to his rule...

No worries, Warren. I am not a mechanic, just a hobbyist who knows enough to get myself into trouble. I'm glad to pass my mistakes along right alongside anything I do actually know -- some things work out well for me, and others just make me feel a bit dumber for having tried to do myself.

Prepare yourselves.

Through the miracles of Modern Science and Technology, I bring you the most boring ten seconds of video you'll ever watch:

Rich, that engine and the other one like it were probably built before Jake's catastrophic event with the high-rpm failure. I'm not stoking the flames here, by any means, but I'd say it sounds like you could revert those to stock if you wanted to be on the super-safe side.

Or you could limit your engine to a safe, relatively sane 6,000 rpms, and not remove your studs with Vise-Grips.

What if one of my "experiences" occurred with one of those engines? Perhaps the one you just ended up with?

I also no longer use 911 fan shrouds and today's twin plug heads are equipped with opposing plugs.

Those valve covers suck and were used only because the car builder wanted them. That was 13 years ago, today I don't allow anyone's requests to weigh on the way my engines are equipped, to include the valve covers. If something sucks; we won't use it.

Lots of things change in 13 years, that engine is probably one of 6 TIV engines that have been equipped with non OEM valve covers.

Well, this was a very interesting thread, made all the more so by the very advanced verbal capacity of our favorite fireman. To bad he is not so facile w/ the nuts and bolts . . . [I don't really mean that, but could not resist.] So now, in retrospect, I can say that if you do not get anything in or out of a carb throat/cylinder with the engine otherwise running and not sounding like a cement mixer full of dry rocks, then the intake valve is not moving. And now we know at least one way that such can happen.

I had those aluminum fined covers w/ my engine as delivered, and I'll admit that they look cool, but the stud mounted shoulder bolt hold-downs are really the shits, if you ask me. I dumped them because there was no way to keep them from leaking. Stock VW covers w/ wire bails -- only way to go. Nothing glamorous at all. All the old 356s came that way too. I suppose I could paint red and orange checks on them . . .

Years ago folks would de-size eight cylinder engines to 6s (or 4s even) by just taking out the pushrods. saves gas. the work the engine does compressing the dead cylinder on the up-stroke (whose valves never move) is regained when the compressed air pushes back on the down-stroke -- so it is like an air spring. really does not hurt anything, so far as I know, and does not add a drag to the engine. these days, with electronic valve actuators in some engines, the big engine folks can get high mileage on the highway by simply turning off the valves electronically. Half the number of cylinders in an eight is still way more power than you need to run steady at 65 mph.

And I think somewhere along the way the valve rocker studs came with eared washers that you could bend over onto the head boss once all was torqued properly. Maybe on the old 356s?? memory not good on this point, and, like Max, I may be remebering something that actually did not happen. but the idea seems appropriate to me, and might be a good recommendation, esp'y for those who like to find the upper ranges of their RPM capabilities.