Thanks, so from the POV of the socket/crankshaft bolt it's a counter-clockwise rotation. That clears that up.

And I didn't mean to suggest the valve clearance was a horrible problem, just from all the time working on the 'yotas I've never had an issue like this...

 

when a motor is titled as a clockwise spinning motor, it is as you stare at the front of the motor. In the Fit, this is looking at the rightside/curbside wheel.

Valve adjustment is necessary on any motor that has it done manually. The valve system has nothing to do with it, honda has had it in nearly ALL of their motors, back even when everything had a carburetor on it.

The fastest way to needing a valve adjustment is driving the car hard when its not warmed up, and doing mostly city driving.

The constant changes in rpm and temperature have a habit of messing up the adjustment.


I can tell you, Ive been to the drags dozens of times, taken the car on long road trips, and spent months at a time where I was driving 80-90% city, and my valves at 24k miles are NOISY as heck.

I still havent gotten around to doing mine. Its on my list to immediately do at teh next opportunity.


I recommend doing an adjustment or checking the tolerance every year.

Ive never had a Honda get broken parts or worn out adjusters from checking or adjusting them too much. My first civic was very noisy when I bought it with 80-90k miles, and a simple valve adjustment made it purr nice and quiet. checking the tolerances and adjusting where necessary kept it smooth all the way through 340k miles, when I sold it. That motor did not burn any oil, and was still the smoothest running motor Ive ever had. Granted it was a stock 80-90 crank horse motor from 1990 lol

 

The purpose of turning the engine in the CORRECT direction is to insure the greatest accuracy. (Besides the secondary issues of loosening a crank bolt, or jumping teeth.)


During normal operation, the crankshaft moves the camshafts.

It PULLS the cams, that is, there is no tensioner on the belt or chain run from the cam to the crank. So any varying tension of the belt or chain will not have an effect.

Timing chains stretch over time so eventually even they need to be replaced. When I was into small block Ford engines, the wisdom was to do them every 100 - 150K miles. Those engines didn't have the same tensioners as modern cars, however.



Bottom line is, those directions were written as they are for a reason....

 

Turning hte engine the same way it operates ensures accuracy like stated above.

if you go backwards, it fights the slack and can allow you to accidentaly set timing SEVERAL degrees off.


Having a motor off by even as much as 4 degrees can be the difference between running great and running like absolute doggy poo

 

er, ... so does the Fit have a time chain tensioner or not?

 

Sure, it does.



14510-RME-A01 TENSIONER, CAM CHAIN

 

Thanks, Buff.

 

I'm buying the Fit back....... I bought it new in 07' and sold it to a close friend in 09'.

Now it has 140k and I know it has new coil packs (90k) and the valves have not been adjusted but it still drives great. Looks like this will be on the initial list of things to do...

Glad I found this topic

 

With a healthy dose of trepidation I did this job yesterday. Here's a few things that might help the next guy doing this in that same mindset. As mentioned, getting the intake manifold out of the way is the big deal. I went at it willy nilly but I think this is how I would do it next time.

Start by removing completely the little cluster of tubes/hoses (one is a breather hose and the other a small antifreeze hose) in front of the throttle body unit, careful, that big hose is fragile and will easily tear by gripping it with pliers.

Take off the lid to the air filter, find the two bolts (one on each side) that hold that whole air cleaner housing and remove them. Disconnect any wiring attached to the air cleaner housing, and then by gently twisting and lifting, the whole thing comes out. Now you've exposed four bolts on the throttle body.

Disconnect all the wiring to the throttle body, unbolt the throttle body from the intake manifold and with the gas lines still attached, gently set it aside off to the right.

Disconnect wiring, remove hoses, unbolt brackets (the little ones that hold up all the spark plug wiring) from the plastic intake manifold. Now you can break those five bolts to remove the plastic part of the intake manifold from the aluminum part of the manifold. Now you have a clear shot at the valve cover.

Undo the valve cover bolts little by little, equally all around, the whole valve cover lifts off as you undo them, do the same when you put it back on, little by little all the way around, it's weird.

Once you can see the valves you do the adjusting procedure outlined in many videos on youtube. That part is pretty straight forward. Here's a tip though.

When the engine is open, cover that 3" x 5" opening where the timing chain is exposed. I had my feeler gauges fly up off of the rag where they were sitting into the engine. While I don't think one went down there, you just don't want anything going down in there. I found the 0.012 gauge but not the 0.007. It was stupid to have removed the two individual feeler gauges from the tool in the first place, knowing what I know now, I would (and did) place the two feelers on a loop of twine so they can't get lost in the engine or engine compartment when things go flying when I grab a rag.

On reassembly I used blue loctite on the five manifold bolts and also on the four throttle body bolts.

Car seems to run better. You can hear the valves tapping with the hood up but not in the cabin. The intake valves weren't off too much, yet all were slightly off (usually a little loose). The exhaust valves were all tight beyond 0.008. Reading through everything up above it all sounded normal.

This wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Now where's that freaking feeler gauge???

 

Surely you mean the coolant hoses on the throttle body. No gas goes to the throttle body, it just opens and allows air in. But yes that is a good tip. No reason to have a bunch of coolant pour onto the ground unless you're fully removing the throttle body for a cleaning. And yes, you should definitely make sure no feeler gauges get lost inside your engine . Actually NOTHING should be left in your engine bay, not even an ant fart. Something in there, especially a piece of metal like a gauge, could really ruin your day.

 

I guess I don't know what those hoses are. They went off towards the rear of the engine compartment, there didn't seem to be any reason to disconnect them.
Having my tools fly towards the open engine was a dumbass move indeed. I would just like nobody else to make the same mistake I did.

 

The Honda repair manual states to drain the coolant as the first step before removing the intake manifold. Is this really necessary?

 

Honda's method probably removed the throttlebody during adjustment procedure

I just unbolted the dang thing and left it hanging on top of the tranny out of the way

 

So it's remove/partially remove intake manifold and throttle body and just leave things hanging off to the side. Lift manifold cover and adjust.
And crank pulley bolt is on driver side or passenger? Then it's new valve cover gasket and manifold gasket if removed?

 

Haven't done it YET, but that sounds about like the gist of it. The bolt for turning the crank is on passenger side, because the transmission is on the driver side.

 

Just did it today. Took me all day. There's nothing partial about it! You must remove the whole manifold assembly. It literally covers the valve enclosure, there's simply no way to get to the valve cover without intirely removing the manifold. It's a very involved procedure and I did with the service manual and still had a really hard time.

My suggestions:

-Do you need to drain the coolant? I say yes! I tried ignoring this step but every time I disconnected a hose, coolant would come pouring out into my engine bay. Unless you don't mind dripping coolant all over the place and topping it off. I would drain it. If I had planned in advance, I woulda changed the coolant while I was at it. A new bottle of coolant is only 20$ or so.

-Remove the battery so you can tug the air box out of the throttle body more easily.
- remove the air box assembly (easy)
- once you have disconnected the appropriate hoses and such, you must remove the intake manifold. This is a major pain in the ass! Know that there is a fifth bolt, hidden underneath the middle of the manifold. It's not super clear in the service manual that there is an extra bolt hidden there and it is super hard to get to. Take a look at a picture of the manifold gasket to get an idea of the placement of all the bolts.
-unplug and remove ignition coils. I also removed the spark plugs because I installed new plugs. My original plugs were denso and they were replaced with ngk iridiums.
I used paper towels to plug the cylinders. I recommend doing this so as you don't drop a tool or something in the cylinder, especially if you removed the plugs. That would cause you to have an extra bad day. However, when you turn the crank, sometimes the paper will come flying out due to compression in the cylinder
-to access the crankshaft bolt, remove the front right wheel (right from the perspective of the driver). I didn't waste time with the little hole in the liner because people have mentioned that it will pull the socket and/or extension of your ratchet when you try to pull out the tool. Getting access is as simple as removing two plastic clips and just pulling the liner down a little.
-bought straight style feeler gauges because all the bent style ones I found started at 0.008" and I wanted to set my intake valves at 0.006. Using straight style gauges was very difficult: since the valves are recessed slightly in the casing, it is nearly impossible to insert them straight under the valves. When the gauges are crooked, it creates the impression of drag, not because the valves are set correctly but because the gauges is crooked. That made the whole experience much more time consuming. I'm sure I could have done the adjustment at least twice as fast with bent style gauges so if you can find them, go with these at any cost!
-when trying to make micro adjustments (from say 0.009 to 0.008) I recommend only partially opening the nut. When the nut is only slightly open, it makes the screw harder to turn, which is desirable when wanting to nudge the screw for a very minute adjustment. Also, I've found that competely opening and closing the nut often disturbs the adjustment, even if you try and hold the screw while closing the nut. I also recommend braking the nuts on all the valves of a single cylinder before getting started. Mine were on so tight, they needed a few hits of a hammer on the wrench to get them loose. If you open a nut suddenly, it's annoying and you can scrape your knuckles on the other nuts/valves. Also, a stubby little screwdriver is best for adjusting the valves

I went through a whole range of emotions when doing this and was almost ready to give up a few times. It was a much bigger job than expected, I would only attempt this if you have a very complete set of tools and a service manual (or not if you are very knowledgeable). I started at about 9 AM and got done at about 4-5 in the afternoon. Remember you have to reassemble everything and refill your coolant if you drained it.

 

@MTian:

1) Remove battery? Maybe. But I don't.

2) Drain coolant? No. You should not have to do this. I wonder if you disconnected something unnecessarily, or if you disconnected from the wrong end.

3) Yes, you must remove the manifold, but not the headers (the pipes). Just have to remove the part directly over the valve cover, as you have stated.

4) Cheer up. It gets easier with practice.

 

1) I removed the battery just because it made it easier to remove the air box from the throttle body. It allowed me to pull to the right. Then again, I have a 51r battery so it might be a little tighter than with you if you still have the 151r.

2) I removed the headers also so that might be why

3) seems like a good idea. Removing the manifold and headers was a big job. I did it exactly like the service manual said. Removing the manifold and header in one big chunk. That's probably what made it so hard. The first step as per the manual is to drain the coolant.

4) haha thanks. Yea I got pretty frustrated but my Fit seems happy so it's all good

 

^^You'll be fine. Besides, doing it yourself is much better than letting some primate who advertises himself as a "mechanic" touch your car.

You did the right thing by following the Service Manual. But, as you go through these things, you'll figure out, as we have, what you need to do and what you don't really need to do, what you need to remove and what you don't really need to remove, and so on.

Good luck.

 

I adjusted the valves on my 09 M/T Sport two weeks ago. Took an hour and a half.