Jessiel11

Hello. I'm writing to help anyone with this problem that I encountered . My car since I bought it, had a constant missfire on all cylinders. I took the initial measures, these being; check coils, change spark plugs, wiring, valve ajusment, ecu "restart", icv cleaning, vacum lines and no luck, missfires kept going and even more when I turned my A/C on. We did a compression test and saw cylinders 1-3 on ~160 and number 4 being on ~50 even after the valve adjusment. My mechanic and I decided to pull the head to see whats happening and in the process change the retainers to the AP2 ones. We pull the head out and we saw the problem. The past owner did a valve adjusment that it locked all the valves by being too tight and they were not opening and closing properly, this causing the valves to crack and get eaten by corrosion. We sent the head to a very recognized machine shop here in Puerto Rico to get cleaned and correct and imperfections. I bought all the OEM parts for the head again, including the valves. We installed back, and it was good as new. No missfires, and it went like a bat out of hell while on vtec.

Now the car is at it best and dyno tune it giving us very good numbers (221whp/153wtq).

For any other question or doubt feel free to send me a PM or an email.

Thank You

jessiel.gonzalez@upr.edu

rpg51

Glad you got it worked out. The more I read about these issues the more I'm convinced that the first thing to do when you get misfires on an engine with some miles on it is to check the compression.

Could you share this info as well:

What year is your car?
Miles on engine?
Are you sure prior owner mis-adjusted valves? Is it possible that they got tight all on their own?
When you did your valve job did you record the gaps before you adjusted?
Did you do a compression test after your head work? Results?

Jessiel11

Sure!
1) year: 2001 (ap1)
2) 110k miles on engine (still the f20, has not been swapped)
3)The mechanic was sure for the reason that they were on the intake side on 0.005 and on the exhaust were on 0.007. Plus he went with the theory that they wanted to "quiet" the engine and get rid of the miss fire quickly by adjusting them so the car could sell easier. And another thing was that the ex owner did not buy a new valve cover gasket and re used the old one with honda bond. That was another sing.
4) Like in number 3, the intake side was on 0.005 and the exhaust were on 0.007. SUPER TIGHT
5) Results of compression test: Cyl #1: 215 Cyl #2: 215 Cyl#3: 215 Cyl #4: 220

Any other info you might want let me know!