I see a lot of people just swap out the springs and retainers on the ap1s. I have an ap1 and i have a box of supertech springs and retainers in my room. I haven't installed them yet because when i inspected my stockers they looked fine. My car has 33k. I understand the problem with the ap1 but if it isn't broken why replace it if your turbo or all motor? There have been people that have made big power on stock heads.


Thanks

 

its a peace of mind thing as, the ap1 retainers are known to crack (and are often not able to be seen unless taken off), whereas the ap2 retainers don't.

 

They only crack if you money shift the car though, so just don't money shift and life is good. The thing is many times valves get bent too regardless of AP1 or AP2 retainers, so in any case the head likely has to come off.

 

I wonder why Honda didn't put a gear display on the dash? Might give you a micro-second, to avoid over-rev disaster. But then again, this would go against "true sport car," driven by a true fanatic driver?

 

You just have to be careful! With a helmet on it seems even more difficult, I must rely on seeing my hand out of the very corner of my eye much more than I thought. I actually had a moment where I thought I grabbed 3rd instead of 5th for a brief second on the back straight of Mid-Ohio and quickly popped it back out. Afterwards I realized no matter how fast I was at getting it out of gear there was no way I actually did as 3rd gear at 116 would have put me through the dash board.

 

They dont just crack from money shifting. There have been plenty of people that have inspected theirs and found that they showed signs of cracking without having known of anything out of the ordinary that had happened.

So we know that they increased the strength in the AP2 for a reason... because there had been some issues with the retainers in the past. They would not have made them thicker (And heavier to some small degree) if they had not needed to. As far as I know, there was nothing wrong with the springs, just the retainers. So you have a set in your house, and at some point I expect you will be adjusting your valves anyways ... and you can install retainers without pulling the head. So you can change them now or wait for there to be something wrong , which likely will come with zero warning and end with a paperweight for a motor. This isnt a "fix it when it is already broken" kind of thing, unless you inspect them regularly and happen to notice they are failing right before they do.

 

Those people also had zero prior knowledge of how the previous owner drove the car. Billman himself contends that there is no issue if the motor is not over reved. He has even explained how it can only be caused by a mechanical over rev. He himself has a well used AP1 with 140k and original retainers. Do you think if he thought it were a concern he wouldn't have just replaced his? Hell I bet it would take him an hour.

No need to replace till you over rev, those who say different don't want to feel like they wasted their time. The worst thing will be if you do replace them, over rev, bend valves and still have to pull the head apart. If you would have just left AP1 retainers it would have been the same result and you can swap to AP2 while you replace the bent valves.

 

As you mentioned, many people have zero prior knowledge of how the previous owner drove the car. Since you can't know for sure without removing the retainers, wouldn't you want to go ahead and replace them while you're in there inspecting (they're not very expensive) and it could potentially save you money in the long run. Replacing a bent valve is surely more expensive? I just picked up my 2nd AP1 at 85k miles and will be getting a valve adjustment along with the retainers upgraded.

 

How many people in this thread are first owners of the car?

 

I'm 4th owner 139k miles checked them each time I've done a valve adjustment, even used a dentist mirror to look underneath just to make sure. Nope mine are pristine, and the guy I got my car from wasn't exactly a car guy.