Re: Spider Valve Job

["alfaguy" <alfaguy@xxxxxxxxxx>]

As far as I know the engines in the 91-93 spiders are pretty much the same as those in the earlier cars.

I've seen many cars with worn valve guides, and never noticed any excessive valve noise from any of them. I'm thinking of one car in particular that I recently did a head gasket on, the guides were shot, but did not replace them at the customers request. Car sounded and ran fine afterwards. Anything is possible though.

Are you sure what you are hearing is not the injectors? The injectors do make a 'clicking' noise as they open and close, on some cars this sounds just like valve clatter.

Try listening to the engine with a mechanics stethoscope to see if you can get a better idea of where exactly it is coming from.

I have noticed in some instances, some inconsistency in how the valve shims fit on the ends of the valve stems, IOW some shims seem looser than others. when I adjust valves now, I always check to make sure that the shims don't move on the ends of the valve stems. Don't know if this makes any difference or not.

Have you looked at the cams closely? I've seen one or two worn cams on the 4 cylinder cars, which is pretty rare but it does happen. You should see evidence of wear on  the corresponding cam follower.

Although I've never seen it on an Alfa, are all the followers tight in their bores? ie any excessive side to side movement. They should move fairly freely, but have no play in the bores. For awhile this was a big problem with Jaguar engines.

Jeff
---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Wiskas42@domain.elided
Reply-To: Wiskas42@domain.elided
Date:  Wed, 16 Apr 2003 13:32:02 EDT

>Has anyone out there had a valve job done to there 91-93 Spider and it made a 
>big difference in the way the engine sounds?What i mean is valve clattering 
>noise. Ive read that 91-93 spiders eat valve guides and was wondering if that 
>was the cause of my valve clattering noise when the engine is warm. 
>Everything else checks out in spec. Timing chain tension,Valve 
>clearances,smooth surfaces on cups etc I thought the only thing left was 
>sloppy guides.
>Thanks, Tony
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