S2000luv

The S2K community is awesome. Thank you so much for your advice. I will order the tools now.

rpg51

The risk associated with adjusting your valves now is almost zero. The risk of not doing it is enormous. The worst thing that could happen if you do it now is that you might discover that your valves clearances are fine.

cosmomiller

I have a 2009. I did my first valve adjust around 40K miles if I remember correctly. Billman said that given the adjustments I had to make, my valves would have been torched by 65K miles. That is what I have now. I just completed my second adjust/check. (Not much change really)
I have not seen a single post where someone with a DBW car did NOT find the valves were in acceptable limits.

Car Analogy

To be fair, the worst that could happen includes messing up the adjustment and engine runs bad, and he has to do it over. Also that he might not push the spark plug tube seals back.properly and he gets a leak, and has to do it over. Also that he might have trouble getting valve cover off, and mess up the paint trying to pry it off.

But its easy to avoid all these possibilities. But its good to know about them going in, so you know where to pay attention durimg the diy.

For getting the timing right, just make sure any valve you are about to adjust has its cam lobe pointing up, away from the follower.

Slowcrash_101

Actually the worst thing that can happen is a jam nut gets stripped and an adjustment screw becomes seized requiring removal of the rocker assembly. Or if he forgets to tighten a lock nut and it spins itself free, meanwhile a screw bottoms out extending the valve until it makes contact with a piston, then it's split rocker and ruined cylinder. Or the jam nut falls through an oil drain into the block's rotating assembly.

Chuck S

Cold engine, cheap special wrench and bent feeler gauges, and a lot of patience. Car on jack stands will help save our back. Help save, probably won't

Any good Honda motorcycle shop can do this as once the valve cover is off it all looks exactly like a scaled up an inline 4 bike engine. "Hey, guys, this looks like our 4-cylinder bike engine!" (Crowd gathers in the shop. Lots of approving comments.)

Engine has to be cold so it's usually more convenient to do this in your garage one Saturday morning. Torques are important, don't guess. Read the instructions. Patience.

New gaskets won't hurt. Best practice is to replace them. Same with new plugs. Engine is easier to turn over to TDC with them out and they're like 10 bucks each. Do it all at once.

-- Chuck

rpg51

Ok - yes - if you don't know how to do a valve adjustment and you fail to do it correctly there are other risks. If that is the situation - bring it to a mechanic and have it done. But, don't wait. Do it now.

windhund116

I'd imagine one of the worse things you could do --- is drop something into the open cylinder head area. Then, not be able to find it. I use rags to plug open areas of engine. And magnetic parts tray to hold removed metal doo-dads.

mikeyds

Yeah, this happened to me, not in the S but a 93 Accord. Lost an adjustment locknut in the motor and never found it...

That motor made it another 30k miles before the locknut got sucked right thru the strainer and destroyed the oil pump.

Make sure to torque those locknuts!

rpg51

The other thing for the OP to keep in mind is that tight valves are quiet. So when you say you don't hear abnormal valve noise you might actually be hearing what tight valves sound like. A certain amount of valve noise is a good thing. Get those valves adjusted as soon as possible!