The Great Honda tick! Lil guidance please

Another ticking source we tend to forget to mention is damages to valve stems and adjuster studs due to neglect. This is a very extreme example from a 450 Foreman motor... but these problems are found often with varying amounts of damage, while working on used Hondas.

As you can see feeler gauges become useless tools for measuring gaps once the valve stem and adjuster stud become beat up and/or worn out.

Using a feeler as I took this motor apart, this one measured .009" on the exhaust valve and .019" on the intake valve. But those actual gaps were much wider due to the concave depressions beat into the tops of the stems. I was only able to measure a portion of those gaps using a flat feeler gauge. If I were to guess that intake valve lash was probably in the neighborhood of .030 or so, minimum. In fact it is so badly beat that soon it would have dropped that valve onto the piston... it was getting perilously close to knocking loose the valve keepers.

The intake valve stem was beat so badly that I had to grind off a wide burr on the stem top so I could pull that valve out through the valve guide.

Incidentally, the valve guide IDs and stems ODs were both still well within specs. The seats were in excellent condition as well. This is a common example of owner neglect.

This guy was lucky, two new OEM valves and new OEM adjuster studs along with new OEM valve seals is all that cylinder head needed to return it to like new condition.

But getting back to the point of this post... always inspect the adjuster studs and the valve stem tops while adjusting valve lash with feeler gauges. If those stem tops are worn a bit and no longer flat the gaps will be wider than can be measured. Those valves will tick and wear and hammer out very fast.. leading your valves & adjusters to resemble this shameful example.