so i am about to do a valve adjustment this upcoming friday, bought all new gaskets, bent feeler gauge and the 10mm valve adjustment tool from amazon. any tips for doing this? things to watch for?

idk if the car had a valve adjustment earlier in its life.

im doing this bc i have mis fire codes 1-4 and a some what of a rough idle.

 

Before you loosen all your lock nuts on the rocker arms make sure they're in spec! If they're good, no need to change them. Establish a "go" and "no go" set of feelers for exhaust and intake sides. It's a simple procedure if you work smarter, not harder.

 

^good advice. Dont break any of them loose unless you need to adjust and do one at a time.

I could just see someone taking all of them loose all at once before measuring a single one of them. lol.

 

Have a decent 3/8th drive torque wrench (0-250 inch lbs) to use on the lock nuts and valve cover bolts. It's amazing how many people break/strip those due to over-tightening.

Follow the instructions in the DIY thread, lots of great info there. Carefully coax the valve cover tube seals over the metal spark plug tubes as they can be cut if they are forced over them. I find that putting a bit of downward pressure on the feeler when it is in the gap will get you a better feel on the amount of drag, it if is slightly angled you will get a false impression of the drag.

 

P0301 through P0304 (as well as the random misfire code) can be a lot of things other than valve adjustment. That said go to top of Under the Hood/Blue stickies/FAQ-DIY/ Engine/ valve adjustment. Two threads in detail.

Utah

 

Yeah I doubt the valve adjustment will cure the misfire codes on its own, the biggest culprit of misfires on these engines is bad coilpacks and bad injectors, but doing a valve check and adjustment is always a good idea. I would still do one but also consider bad coils and injectors as possible issues.

 

will one bad coilpack or injector cause the cylinders around it to misfire as well and give the random code??
I'm about ready to replace everything just for peace of mind for spring.

 

Sorry to hijack the thread, but I had a question that might be helpful to anyone doing a valve adjustment as well

I did this for the first time last weekend, and noticed that there is some play in the adjustment screw assembly (you can push/pull it up and down and it will move accordingly, slightly). I did my adjustment with the screws pulled up, is this correct? I think squeezer mentioned that you are supposed to do it when they are pushed down, but would like a confirmation from others as well as a recommendation of whether or not it's that big of a deal such that I should redo the adjustment. Thanks!

 

From researching and my own experience, I can say that random misfires on every cylinder is mostly due to valves not in spec. What can it hurt? If it fixes the problwm , please report back.

 

well i planned on adjusting the valves to the tightest spec. 21-25 on intake and 25-29 on exhaust. i dont think its my coils bc i rearranged them 3 times along with the plugs. i was thinking injectors but i dont see a performance drop at all. CEL never came on while driving it was only at idle. and long i leave and reset it the faster the light comes on each time.