Valve adjustment woes

[okyoureabeast]

Here I am doing my first valve adjustment and it figures that I am having troubles.


I have the special bent wrenches and the cam lobe is at the 1 o'clock position. My feeler gauge is telling me that the intake valve on cylinder 1 is tight. I loosened the locking nut and now I have been turning the adjustment nut counterclockwise to loosen it for almost 20 minutes. Somewhere in there I remembered that there is a third wrench to keep the springs from turning which won't allow the adjustment to occur. I got my friend to hold a screw driver to keep the nut from turning, but I am still not getting any clearance for the feeler gauge to get in.

My question is, if the valves are crazy out of spec (50,000) is it to be expected that I need to loosen the valve a lot of times to gain more clearance?

and two

When I am adjusting the nut with the screw driver keeping the spring nut from rotating I hear this pop every now and then when I am loosening it. What is this?

Thanks for the help