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

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-Typos courtesy of my mobile phone.

you want to turn the adjusting nut clockwise so that it turns its way down the valve stem. - shortening the effective length of the valve stem.

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Well now I feel stupid Thank you.

It's not stripped. I've just been raising the rocker pad for the past 20 minutes.

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-Typos courtesy of my mobile phone.

20 minutes is a long time. Is it stripped? there is a thread or two around here describing that problem.

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good luck!

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There is no need to do anything with a screwdriver, at least not on my '83 with the same engine. Just hold the top nut in place while loosening the bottom lock nut by turning it clockwise. Then make the adjustment by turning the top nut clockwise to increase the clearance (more likely since valves tend to tighten over time) or counterclockwise to decrease the clearance.

Once you achieve the desired clearance (after I insert the proper feeler gauge in between the lobe and the rocker, I like to make sure that I cannot insert the feeler gauge that is the next size up, just to ensure that the gap is not too large), simply hold the top nut in place while turning the bottom lock nut counterclockwise until tight. If the top nut moves at all during tightening you will likely need to readjust. I always check mine after tightening to ensure that it is still within spec.

Over time you will learn to loosen the lock nut as little as possible in order to make the adjustment, which speeds up the process. The first time I adjusted my valves it took me probably three hours. Last week when I did it for the fourth time it took around an hour.

Thanks for the tip. I am actually having another issue right now.

I can't get my wrench onto the intake valve on the 2nd cylinder. What are my solutions here? There are groves that the wrench catches but it won't slide in. Any tips to catch the nut?

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-Typos courtesy of my mobile phone.

Are you saying that you can't get your wrench around the nut? Is the nut somehow deformed or misshapen? I assume that your wrenches are fine if you've already adjusted other valves. I also assume that you've tried both wrenches and neither will work.

Sometimes I have to push the wrench to get it to slide into place, but it's always slid right in with no more than a medium amount of force.

It must be deformed. I can't for the love of this car get my wrench onto the bottom nut. The top nut is fine and I can prove the wrenches are fine because I just adjust the first cylinder (exhaust and intake).

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-Typos courtesy of my mobile phone.

try to get on the nut from below, instead of the side.

Push down on the retainer with something while you try to get the wrench b/w the retainer and the nut.

...or dare I say........... "get a file"?

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If your set of Special Wrenches are not the Hazet wrenches but the ones made by M.S. or someone else who made them (they most often have tubing/pipe handles) the heads of at least 1 wrench may need to be thinned.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

They're a set of masterhand wrenches. I know it's a dumb question, but is it safe to assume since I did the first two valves just fine that the heads of the wrenches .

I think i'm going to be screwed on the 2 cylinder intake valve. The nut is incredibly deformed.

What type of punishment can I expect from a loose intake valve?

Edit: Loose at .40 mm

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-Typos courtesy of my mobile phone.

Sounds like you need another 'older car' special tool... a pair of needle nose vise grips.

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1985 300D 198K sold
1982 300D 202K
1989 300E 125K
1992 940T

"If you dont have time to do it safely, you dont have time to do it"

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

Can you take a small file and dress up the deformation so that a Wrench can get on it or was this the one the some said was stripped?

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

Haven't tried yet, I need to get a metal filer. What I did in the mean time was file down the corners of my wrenches. This allowed me to get at the locking nut.

There are a couple of good sides that I can attach the wrench onto now. Comparing the locking to adjusting nut reveals that it is all wonky.

Time to march to the barn in the cold to find some longer needle nose pliers. The ones I have are bent at the tip, but there's just not enough grip on the pliers.

I've been spinning the adjusting nut, loosening the nut, and then moving the entire locking nut upwards and repeating this procedure. It may not make much sense while i'm describing it, but it's working so far.

What would be the procedure for getting at this nut? I was looking at the nut on the rocker tower and I'm quite tempted to just pull the whole thing out and replace the thing.

Also how bad would a loose valve of .35 mm be

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-Typos courtesy of my mobile phone.