dupes4lyfe

Hey h-t! I recenty finally finished my gsr build into my 97 ek civic.
5k km later it has droped a valve on cylinder 3 taking out everything in its path.

PyroProblem

Green tiny gasket sounds like a valvestem seal being smashed. Was retainer to valvestem seal clearance verified? Piston to valve and valve to valve clearance verified?
carefully look for any signs of abnormal contact during disassembly. Sounds like something touched. Check all the valvestem seals and bottoms of retainers.

turbociv910

did the spring break

dupes4lyfe

It was built by a machine shop, I had a local honda builder do the swap for me about 2 years ago.
he had too take off the head to upgrade for titanium retainers and dual springs.. I can't verify if he actually measured. Says he did.

I will be inspecting the head more or getting a look from a machine shop sometime soon.
the spring is still fine,
​​​​​​​the retainer was just found jammed in the rocker arm with a hole (as in picture) no cracks

civic-steve-94

Something was recently brought to my attention during the build process of my cylinder head. In some cases the lift on the center lobe of the cam is too high when the engine is not in vtec allowing the center rocker arm to contact the valve spring retainers. This was something i never thought about because up until this point i have used honda OEM cams. I was informed by the guy assembling my cylinder head that when a high lift cam is used he always checks the clearance to make sure nothing is going to touch and cause a failure. I can't say thats what caused this to happen or would cause this to happen but anything is possible.

dupes4lyfe

you sir were correct! But it was only while in vtec.
the center rocker arm was dinging the retainers, after a while that 1 let go and ducked through.

every exhaust side retainer has little scratches

Lsvtecy0

I've had the same thing happen to my ITR last year, a Crower titanium retainer failure where it lost alot of material and ended up lodged between my valve springs but I'm lucky my valve didn't drop all the way down and destroy my engine. The only damage was to the tip of the valve stem and causing my valve lash to be off by a bit. I've learned that titanium retainers aren't meant for daily driving and require inspections every few thousand miles.

Pro-SeriesFab

The biggest single problem I see with titanium retainers is that they require a line to line fit or slightly tighter (.005-.002 or so) on the valve spring. If any space/slop exists on the retainer to spring engagement, it will fail exactly like this where material is essentially ground off the steps on the retainer. It literally has to "snap" into the spring. I feel like some retainer manufactures kind of gloss over this and don't stress its importance or don't mention it at all unfortunately.

Not saying this was your problem here Lsvtecy, but 9 times out of 10 when I see a titanium retainer fail it is because of this.

dupes4lyfe

I feel like this was the problem, I was able to move the spring a tiny bit inside the retainer which seem definitely abnormal.
looks like comp cams valvetrain shouldn't be used xD (machine shop supplied parts) I know better now.