D1sclaimer

With the beehive springs you have to remove the OEM valve springs seats and replace them with a new Ferrea seat. The dual valve spring kits just shim up on top of the OEM valve spring seat. The Ferrea exhaust seats for my beehive springs did not fit around the guide and were not deburred. After Slappynuts deburred them, they fit like a charm.

If you have the tools to do it, AP2 retainers are only like 50 dollars from Honda for a complete set. It'd be a cheap piece of mind. If you have a compressor with at least a 15 gallon tank(even thats pushing it), I can tell you how I changed mine with less than 50 dollars in tools and not even removing the rocker assembly.

rikhemi

Previous owner must have over-reved it. Mine had 148k miles with 400hp on boost and none were cracked. As long as you never over-rev the enging, you are fine. If you purchase a used motor, I would recommend to check them/replace them just as a precaution.

ftpsk8

Wow only at 25k miles too.. must have been over rev'd. Glad that I just replaced mine.

s2000442

I would like to know how you did the change if you care to post it.

B5254T4

I wonder how close you were to dropping a valve? Hard to say and very expensive to find out.

D1sclaimer

I should be able to put something together tomorrow and post it up.

H4RD ON

Pretty crazy.... I took the chance and ran my AP1 for 8 months with 400HP (that includes a few "street races" and about 8 times at the track) Car has 95k miles and just a few weeks ago I went ahead and replaced with AP2 retainers but they looked fine???

Weird that only some do this, yet mine have almost 3 times as many miles and are, seem to be, fine.

s2k.igor

True, I will only swap the intake side, parts are already at my desk.

D1sclaimer

Alright. These are links to the manufacturers websites so I do not think these links violate s2ki's policies. If you follow these instructions, you assume all risks, implied or not implied, involved with the procedure. I highly recommend you refer to the Honda Service Manual for this procedure as well because it has more pictures.

You will need an air compressor with at least a 15 gallon tank, a set of deep sockets, a ratchet, and the two tools listed below to perform the change. This mini DIY was made using my spare head off of the car. I will explain the steps that do not have pictures and how to do everything with the head on the car.

Valve Keeper Remover & Installer
This can be bought online for around 30 dollars.




Valve Holder
If you have a compression tester with a similar hose, that will work too. Online these are around 10 dollars. I believe most O'Reilly Auto Parts stores have a different brand of the same thing for around 9 dollars.




The first step is to take the valve cover off. This entails taking out the ignition coils, unplugging the connectors to the camshaft sensors, pulling the wires to the side of the head, removing the bolts holding the valve cover down, and then pulling the valve cover off.

With the valve cover off, the engine should be set to TDC for cylinder 1. You need a 19mm socket and ratchet to turn the crankshaft. There are two ways to tell if the engine is TDC for cylinder 1. Make sure the car is out of gear. You can turn the crankshaft until the white dot on the crank pulley is even with the arrow on the timing cover. The other way is to look at the camshaft sprockets and turn the crankshaft until until the two lines on the outer rims of each camshaft sprocket line up with each other and the main timing gear's two outer dashes are flush horrizontal with the top of the head. Here is a picture from the S2000 gallery on here that I stole and outlined the dashes showing TDC for cylinder 1.



Now it is time to remove the cam caps and camshafts. The service manual says to loosen tension on the valve lash. I did not do this to avoid having to set the valve lash again. I believe you can damage your cam caps if you do not loosen tension so what you decide to do is your responsibility. If you do loosen the valve lash, it is just another 15-30 minute job of setting valve lash when the cams and cam caps are put back in. I will not discuss adjusting valve lash in this DIY. There is a loosening/tightening sequence for removing the cam caps to follow. Here is my MSPaint diagram. I usually first loosen each bolt a third of a turn in this sequence and then go through again in sequence fully loosening the bolts. Keep the bolts in the holes of the cam caps.

The cam caps should labeled be in order from 5 to 1 on the top of each cam cap. 5 being the rear and 1 being closest to the front of the car. There are also arrows on the top of each cam cap pointing to the front of the car. Place these aside after taking them off the engine.

Now the cams need to be removed. They should just come straight out. I just put them inside the valve cover to prevent them from getting dirt or gravel on them. I also try to keep them on whatever side of the engine they came off to keep them in order so I don't get the exhaust cam and intake cam mixed around.

With the engine at TDC for cylinder 1, remove the spark plug from cylinder 1. Screw in the valve holder hose by hand. Make sure the compressor is full and is ready to cycle on. If there is a regulator, turn it down to around 40psi. After the hose is hooked up, you can up the regulator to around 100psi. If you do not regulate down, the engine can turn when you first hook up air. That's not necessarily bad, but the point of having the piston at the top of the cylinder is a safety in case the valve drops down while working with it.

Now, this is what you should be looking at.



Flip up the rocker arm. There is a pin in the middle arm. Make sure this does not come out and if it does come out, make sure its put back in.



Remove the black part of the valve keeper tool.



Put air to the cylinder through the hose. How this works is you push on the retainer with the tool. There is a magnet on the inside of the silver part of the valve keeper tool. You should hear the keepers hit the tool when its released from the valve.



Now, with air to the cylinder holding the valve up, press down on the retainer with the tool. The retainer should come off with the tool.



After you pull the retainer off, the valve keepers should be inside stuck to the magnet.



If you're replacing the springs too, it should just come right out by hand.



If you're running a Ferrea dual spring kit, I believe the spring seat just gets put on right at this step. If you run the Ferrea beehive springs, you need to do a couple more steps with the valve stem seal and new spring seat that I will not cover.

Lets say you have the spring back in and are ready to install the retainer and valve keepers. The keepers are angled. The wider part of the keepers go to the top like this.




Put the keepers into your retainer in the same orientation.



Place the retainer with keepers on top of the valve spring.



Put the black part of the valve keeper tool back into the silver part of the tool.



That stem that sticks out from the end is spring loaded. How that works is that it presses down on the on the keepers and pushes them into the groove while you are pressing down on the tool which compresses the spring. Its a nice design.

Now, while making sure that the retainer, tool, and valve stem are lined up, press down. If you are running aftermarket valve springs, it takes a lot of force. I strongly recommend having a friend help you press down on the tool unless you are Hulk Hogan. The stock valve springs can be done alone, but aftermarket springs most likely require two people.



Sometimes only one of the two keepers get seated while the other is halfway seated. If this results, you can try pressing on the retainer with the tool again until both get seated. Here are the retainer and keepers installed again.



Now you can do the other 3 valve springs/retainers in this cylinder as long as you keep it pressurized. Since the number 4 cylinder is also at TDC on the exhaust stroke, you can do cylinder 4 without having to turn the crankshaft. Just make sure you put the air hose to whatever cylinder you are working on. After you are done with cylinders 1 and 4, you can turn the crankshaft 180 degrees to change TDC to cylinders 2 and 3 and do the same procedure for cylinders 2 and 3.

After all the valve springs/retainers are done, put the engine back to TDC for cylinder one. Like before, the main cam gear should have the horizontal dashes flush with the head. Put the cams back on and make sure that the dashes on them are pointing toward each other. You want it to look like this again.



Put the cam caps back on and tighten the bolts to the same sequence as before. These bolts require 16 ft/lbs



If you loosened the rocker arm valve lash, this is the time to set the valve lash. I am not covering this in this DIY.

Now, put the valve cover back on hooking up the cam sensor plugs and ignition coils.

yzracer323

Nice writeup! This will be helpful when I swap mine out, just got them in the mail.