well i took my cams out of my h22 today and this is what i saw from my exhuast side middle rocker arm

waht could cause this? too tight of a valve lash adjustment? note: this is stock cams with supertech valve train

 

Incorrect valve lash, valve springs are too stiff, oiling issue in the head. We've seen this happen with stock cams and Skunk2 valve train too.

 

i have supertech valve springs will this do it its stock cams and there is oil in the system its wierd cuz it only happened on the exhuast side

 

what type of oil?

 

ouch, my own worst nightmare.

Exh. cam trashed too?

 

5w-30 synthetic mobile one always changedd on time

 

how long had it been since you did a valve adjustment?

 

I vote valve lash issue.

 

like a year its a fully built turbo h22 motor

 

Were the cams the original cams for that engine and were all the rockers kept in their original position? Are any of the oiling ports for those rockers clogged? Are the oil orifices and vtec solenoid clean (no clogs)? Were the intake and exhaust oil control orifices swapped? Does that middle rocker pivot smoothly or does the LMA stick or bind at all?

I've seen this a few times on Honda-Tech and I don't know if a cause has been 100% determined (at least no one has reported back any findings). Sometimes things just break perhaps?

 

Another theory is that oil specs keep taking out additives (for emissions) which protect against this kind of wear. It has been suggested that this is part of the reason that honda went to roller rockers in their new engines.

https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=918465

 

You cannot easily install the oil control orifices backwards. One is taller than the other, and the cam cap will not sit flush if the control orifices are installed backwards.

I believe this is mostly an oiling issue, or using valve springs that are too stiff. My current setup has some abnormal wear on the VTEC lobes and rockers, and I'm just using Portflow springs with stock retainers along with stock cams.

According to some sources, the issue is the volume of oil going to the head. It's not enough. Supposedly these issues can be resolved by plumbing a line from the oil feed directly to the head. I'm planning to run a line directly from the oil pressure sending unit port to the plug on the "backside" of the head directly under the coil on the 5Gen. This supposedly allows a much greater volume of oil for the head, which should cure these issues.

Using an oil with a more than average amount of anti-wear additives certainly couldn't hurt.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 117 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">You cannot easily install the oil control orifices backwards. </TD></TR></TABLE>

Yes you can. Swap the parts and just bolt down the cam caps. It's aluminum vs. steel and the taller orifice will make its own room. I've seen it happen and in fact I started building my own engines after DPR sent me an engine with this "custom" feature. It had other problems too, like striped timing tensioner bolts, but I think honda tried to make it a "no brainer" by making the orifices different heights--they underestimated the all mighty buzz gun wielding monkey though.

I suppose if you're not paying attention it can be hard to tell they are swapped, because when bolting down the cam caps the valve springs will be pushing everything up.

 

Then whoever did the work really must not have been paying attention! I've done this before because the diagram in the Helms is not correct. If you're paying any attention at all, when the cam caps are torqued to spec, there will probably be a gap (at least in my case, there was). Now if some ******** is using air tools to install cam caps, that's a whole new issue in itself.

When I did this, it ruined the orifice but the cam cap looked fine. While the orifices are steel, they appear to be a very soft steel from my experiences with them.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 117 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">When I did this, it ruined the orifice, but the cam cap looked fine. </TD></TR></TABLE>

Hmmm. I wonder if that was changed on newer H22's? Maybe honda made it a real no brainer, where it would not go together at all.

The extra oil line you are running, is that basically to the VTEC solenoid? I'm trying to remember how the oil runs in the H22 head. There is no oil control orifice in the block so the head gets full pressure. Then I think there are drilled passages in the head and cam caps. I think the central oil control orifice lets oil through to the rocker shafts and the cam journals, but most of it goes through that passage on the back of the head to the VTEC solenoid, which also has a small orifice to let some through to the rocker shafts. When the solenoid opens then the two orifices in the rocker shafts keep the pressure high enough to slide the VTEC pins, while everything left over is showered on the cams via those rails on the cam caps?

It's been a while since I looked that close at a H22 head, but I wonder if it's possible to just open up some of the drilled passages or oil control orifices. I guess we'd need some pressure gages and a valve cover with a window to test it.

 

yeah I wonder if you could just modify the larger orfice in the middle of the head. seems to me that the middle one controls the flow and the two at the end of the cam caps controls the pressure.

 

BTW are there any options/shops out there who resurface rocker arms?

 

I need to look to see how oil flows through the head. It's been a few years, since the last time I looked at it.

 

how about opening up the holes in the head where it seems like honda took a hammer and chisel to , i think those are just the drains tho.

i like the idea of creating another oil line from the sending unit to the space in the head by the coil.

But how could the oiling issue be so bad that it only eats at the rocker pads? If oiling was the issue, i would think the caps along with everything else would get ruined.

 

The journals in the caps are force fed oil. The rockers are lubricated by splashed and/or sprayed oil. Very different means of lubrication.

It also eats the VTEC lobes since they're the most highly stressed.

The areas in the head that you're thinking about Blake are drains.

You'll note that it's the exhaust rockers that generally get eaten up. I suppose it probably has something to do with heat as well, but the head is tilted so that the exhaust rockers are higher than the intake rockers (the oil supply is pressurized, so I wouldn't imagine gravity would be an issue).

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Evil.98vtec &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">If oiling was the issue, i would think the caps along with everything else would get ruined.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Well, assuming nothing is clogged up, I think we're talking about oiling as a contributing factor. if you have upgraded valve springs and you're in VTEC, you end up with with a few hundred pounds of force (not even counting dynamic loads) on the small contact area between the middle rocker and the VTEC lobe. All other related components have round journals with relatively huge contact areas that are pressure fed with oil.

If you think about how the cam moves the rocker, the contact area is a thin line, and I think the main source of oil for that contact is the rail on top of the cam caps that showers the cam.

Also, now that I think of it, these two rails are the same. There is not an intake and and exhaust version, yet there are two passages in each. One that showers all 3 lobes and one that showers the VTEC lobe. If it's always the exhaust rockers that die, I wonder if the way the holes line up above the valve train has anything to do with it. Maybe on the intake side, the holes line up in a way that provides better oiling than the same pattern shifted (but not mirrored) over the exhaust side. (This is all going from memory btw, so I could be wrong...)

 

I need to look at the two spare heads I have...when I find time.

On my head, I'm using Portflow springs, and I did have some abnormal wear on the VTEC lobes and rockers, however, it hasn't become any worse. So I'm not sure the reason for the initial wear, but no continued wear.

For what it's worth, I use Red Line SAE30 race oil and very high oil pressure (100+ PSI when semi-warm, 80+ PSI when fully warm at high RRMs).

 

Thank you God for this thread!! I had the same problem with my rocker arms when I was running crowler valvetrain and cams. I beat myself up for answers for this. I adjust my valves every 5k and change my oil with royal purple every 2 k (don't flame me, I love my H22). My last set of rockers were eatin up so bad the cams had to be replaced as well. Since then I've been running Skunks 2 valve train/ cams with 0 problems. I'll post up pics of my old rockerarms when I get home tonight.

 

fwiw, I ran crower3 cams w/crower valvetrain and they did NOTHING like this to my rockers.

mobil 1 10w-30 oil

 

Thats weird...I'm not blaming Crowler for having bad parts or anything I'm just speaking from personal experience