if anyone lives in the socal area dont ever go to south coast motors to get work done.

so i went this morning to get my valves adjusted. they were pretty loud. paid $90 for everything. went back and picked up my sedan and everything sounded good. i should of open and checked under the hood before i left but i trusted the mechanic and the car sounded good so i left. made the 15 min drive back to my house and by the time i got there the car had started smoking. i popped open the hood only to see that the gasket had not been placed back on the valve cover properly. a piece of the gasket was sticking out on the back side of the motor and was shooting oil out. not only that but my valves had started getting noisy again. soab! my question is... do you valves just unadjusted like that? could it be that i need new valves or is it just that maybe he didnt adjust right? would that have anything to do with the gasket being put on wrong? fyi my car has 212,XXX miles on the stock motor. any info would be great. thanks.

 

go back there and make them fix it. your a paying customer.

 

if its a single cam there is nothing you can do about it,,there just loud and if you have it to tight were its quiet a check engine light will come on a obd2. Just know that it was adjusted to spec because its very hard to mess that up.Single cams are so easy to adjust the valve clearance on them and if you been doing it for so long it takes no longer than 20 mins to do all them.

 

it is a single cam but i dont think it is supposed to be loud. i mean there has to be a way to quiet it down. it wasnt always like that.

 

may just be beyond its service limit at 212k

 

dude have you ever done a valve adjustment job yourself,,,if you have then you would know that there is nothing you can do than have the right clearance for it.
Very easy to do dude,,,tdc number 1 piston valves,,,number 2 at the 3 o'clock ,6 o'clock for the 4 ,and third would be at the 9 o'clock.

 

no i havent actually. not everyone on here is a honda mechanic especially me. i simply dont have the tools either. hence the post about the valve adjustment.

 

Well you paid the guy what a $100 for it and not satisfied,,you could have spent $25 on tools and pictures online how to do it ,and be satisfied and learned how to do it.

 

You should take it back to the shop (Actually, the shop should pay to have the car towed back) and give the mechanic the chance to fix his error. Nobodies perfect and it may have been an honest mistake. If he stands behind his work there should be no problem. Don't drive the car until its fixed or if the engine gets damaged its your fault. Did you check the oil to see how low it is? I would not think that the engine would be damaged at all from just a short trip like that.

 

as far as them being noisy again, probably from lack of oil (my moms jeep does it when her oil is low, and you were shooting oil out of your engine, so it's probably low ). Give the guy the chance to fix it, he should be more than happy to do so. Everybody screw stuff up now and again, and valve cover gaskets are some SOB's sometimes, sounds like an honest mistake, not shoddy work. If he doesn't want to fix it at no cost, then I would have a problem.

 

alright well it got fixed for free. he replaced the gasket with another new one for free. and he cleaned up all the oil in my engine bay. nice. next day i got an oil change. i was due for one anyways. noise went away. the next day though it started up again. not sure. i know its the valves but is there anything else i should do? any info is appreciated.