So i have been having some issues for some time with my head.

Bought this car with about 70k miles on it. I was planning on doing the ap2 retainers as preventative maintenance. Had the parts for a week or two when i did over rev the motor myself. Got to work on the car right after that and found an etched intake camshaft. Replaced the retainers and the bad camshaft and thought i was done with it. Later i read that the rocker arms should be replaced as well if there is signs of wear. They looked ok to me, but i think that was not the case.

Around 95k miles i started to have issues with misfire. Got in there to do a valve adjustment and found most of my valves to be too tight. Fixed the misfire but i also noticed i have another etched intake cam. This time the rollers dont look good either.

So here we are at about 108k miles. Have used cams and rocker arms to install. Open up the motor and now i find issues with the exhaust side rocker arms as well. The used rocker arms i got looked good in pics. Turns out the whole intake side is etched on the set i just bought. I will not have enough good sets of rockers to replace all the worn ones on my car now that i have issues on the exhaust side. It does look like i may have some cracked exhaust retainers as well.

So i assume the first camshaft was etched due to the retainers moving too far up the valve and contacting the rollers. I assume the second cam was etched due to me not replacing the rockers the first time. I also assume that my probably cracked exhaust retainers are now causing harm on the exhaust side.


Intake cam etching- (Cylinder 1 and 2. The first etched cam also had wear of cylinder 4, but not this time)



Exhaust cam -



Intake rockers -





Exhaust Rockers-


Exhaust retainers-







If this is not cracked retainers and bad rocker arms causing all this, then what is it?

 

valve retainers are gone and broken, keepers are probably sunken, replace asap do not drive it, replace the camshaft too

 

Etching of the camshaft was a notorious problem on the 02-03 civic si k-series motors due to poor quality castings (the below picture was actually the cam on my car). Has this ever been a known issue with the f-series as I'm sure the cams were cast in the same timeframe?

 

The etching of the camshafts are usually due to a cracked valve retainer. The cracked retainer is degraded and the fine metal dust it produces is what actually etches the camshaft. The F series motor has no known issues with bad castings. Based off the pics you posted it does definitely look like you have cracked retainers.

 

Did you bother changing out the springs?

 

So my questions is this... Is this rocker no good because of the one small line on it? i can not feel the line at all, just see it.

 

To this day Honda still has problems with all k and j series engines with camshafts. I've fixed multiple f20 and f22 as well for this issue that didn't have any retainer problems. You can usually hear the valve tap and catch it before damaging the valves/retainers. In your case I'd be putting in anything that looks suspect at this point. Also be sure your cam journals are OK. Perform a leak down after repairs but before refiring engine.

 

Your exhaust retainers are clearly broken.

I have never seen cam damage on an S2000 that was not cause by a roller rocker contacting the retainer or spring. And I have likely pulled more S2000 valve covers than anyone.

 

The service manual says to clean the rocker arms in a solvent. Looked around and can not find a solid answer to what solvent i should use. What would be best?

 

As I am trying to educate myself, would someone be able to circle in the picture what it is exactly that shows the bad exhaust retainer, I'm not sure what I am looking for