in december 2005 i misshifted on the highway bent valves and let honda repair it at my dollar. now in late june 2006 my cel pops up i bring it in and they say bent valves again!! i know i havent misshifted/overreved cause i havent been jack@$$in around and ive been gone for about 3months prior to that. im trying to get my car covered under their 12000miles/1year warranty and they tellin me no cause they say "valve doesnt bend on its own" . so i tell my extended warranty people i authorized tear down and they sent an inspector he said there wasnt any signs of missuse and there was only one bent valve. but my extended warranty said they cant/wont cover it since its supposed to be under hondas repair warranty. my question is: are there ANY other ways a valve can get bent besides misshiftin? because i really dont want to spend another $2k for a reason thats not my fault ya know? any info/advice would help cause ima bout to deploy soon and i dont want my car in pieces while im gone.

 

A really bad valve adjustment (way too tight) can result in a bent valve at less than redline speeds. Also, did any spark plugs disintegrate? This can also bend a valve when a piece gets lodged in the wrong place.

 

My guess is they missed one of the bent ones the first time around. The missed downshift is the most common cause. If a valve was just a little tweeked they may have missed it and now it has worn the valve guide. Don't know how you prove that though. I would contact the Regional Representative for your area. Explain that you previously mis shifted and payed out of pocket for that. You now understand the importance and there is NO way you did it twice. The dealer has no budget to make things right where the Regional Rep does.

Utah

 

As a follow-up to Utah's good advice, do you have a record of which valves were replaced during the initial repair? If they didn't replace all of the valves, you could argue that the valve was bent in the first incident.

 

the spark plug in cylinder 1 was pretty ugly so i changed them all b4 i took it back in.

i still have the original invoice of the repairs and their was an order for all 16 valves. i spoken with american honda and they looked at my case and they still stand by that its not parts failure. because it would have happened sooner.

 

Has the valve been checked or have they assumed its bent because it fails a leakdown/compression check or its not sealing against the seat.

A valve can show bent valve symptoms like leakdown and burning if its not sealing against the seat. I would get an independent automotive engineer to inspect the head and check with a new valve to see if there is a seat to valve alignment problem, of if there is damage to the guide. If the guide was damaged and not repaired at the first repairs, it could easily result in a valve becoming burnt or not sealing properly.

Check on the initial invoice if they had the valve seats recut. If they didnt I would question why this wasnt done.

Good luck.

Chris

 

i made the same mistake (improper downshift, 6th - 2nd) but only for a split second. I immediately took the car in for the leakdown/compression test and passed with only "a slight fluctuation in vaccuum pressure," which the mechanic and I attributed to the slipping/unsealed coupler for my intake. he did warn however that the possiblity of bent valves may not become apparent until months later. it's been at least 6 months by now.

have I waited long enough?

the only thing that worries me is every once in a while i'll have a rough start-up. once the car started and then slowly dropped in rpm until the engine died. however, i think this could be cause by extreme temperature changes and/or the fact that my throttle body is partially open.

 

I think there are only two likely scenarios here.
1. They failed to repair EVERYTHING in the valve train which was damaged by the misshift, in which case it should be covered by the 12K warantee.
2 .They installed something improperly, again covered under 12K warantee.

To s2crazy, How is it even POSSIBLE to do a 6th>2nd misshift???

 

going for fourth. skip downshifting is fine unlike skip upshifting.

 

as of now my car is still at the dealer with the head off ive contacted the BBB and going to have to pursue futher actions because they wont return mycalls when im tryin to recieve a written documentation saying that they wont cover it and why. so i can give it to my extended warranty inspectors to review.