I only have 157,000 miles on this engine and the head needs to be rebuilt or replaced. Is this normal? When I bought this CRV back in 1999, I noticed (what I thought was) louder than normal valve clicking or clacking. I took the car back to the dealer 3 times. Once when it had 19,600 miles, then when it had 24,600 and both times, the valves were adjusted. I took it back at 30,400 miles because of the same issue and was told that the noise I was hearing was normal and there waas nothing wrong. Now, at 157,000 a freakin valve cracks. I told them something was wrong with the head. What do you think? Should I write a letter to Honda or just pay the thousands of dollars the dealer is asking for? I was always told that I may get 300,000 miles out of the engine. Now, I'm worried that after this, something else is going to break.

 

receding exhaust valves is very common on crv's, due to lack of valve adjustment. which causes the valve to burn

 

It is very common in 1st Gens, I just had the dealer replace my head for free since I still have the Honda care warranty. I did not get any noise, my CRV just acted like it had a vacuum leak, it would shake a lot. Head was replaced and now it runs fine.

 

How many miles did you have when your head needed to be replaced?

 

My CRV had 91k but I bought it used, not sure if the previous owner had the valves adjusted at anytime.

 

You know what bothers me about this most? That the maintenance manual says adjust valves if noisy. As far as I can remember, I don't remember reading anything that said adjust valves every 10,000 or 30,000 miles. If adjusting was required to keep from this happening, I wonder why they didn't require it. The valves in my CRV were always noisy; that's why I took it back to the dealer 3 times.

Anyway, I did find some postings on another website from people who said the same thing happened to them. If this was happening so much, I wish someone (i.e. Honda) spoke up.

 

was/is this an issue with 3rd gen CR-V also ? (2009 model year)

 

i highly doubt it. the 1st gen and 3rd gen are different in every way, dif motor dif trans dif computer setups. in my personal opinion, you should do valve lash every 50k. i did it to every honda ive ever owned as soon as i bought them. i had the dealer do it when i bought my v. hondas all have a very louder than usual valve noise compared to any other car out there. my da teg did, my ef civic did, and 2 jdm b16's that ive had did. ive never heard any valve noise that was louder than usual. i guess if they are out of wack bad enough you would REALLY know.

 

Well, if this type issue continued on through the gens, Honda would be losing lots of customers. However, since a 2009 probably doesn't have over 100,000 miles on it, you won't know till then.

Regarding making sure the valve lash was checked; I doubt that would've helped me. I bet if I was paying through the nose for dealer maintenence, they probably would've offered me some relief but, since I choose not to, I have to pay through the nose now. If only I would've sold it when I paid it off.

 

B20 heads used go for $150 or less, just throwing that out there...

Also you can get a full B20 swap for $500 (longblock) so paying the dealer
thousands for them to fix your head is a waste !

I wish you lived closer, i would love your money

 

The dealer wanted me to pay $2,600 for a head. I was shocked with that price. Does that seem a little over priced? Then they've wanted $1,000 for labor.

Unfortunatly, I still haven't gotten it fixed. I have a cousin who's doing the labor. He's removed the head and sent to a machine shop to have it rebuilt so I have no idea how much this is going to cost me in total. So far, I've rented a car to 3 weeks. That was $400. I had to buy a chain wrench for $55 to get the balancer off. The cousin said he will do for $600 minus the $55 wrench. I don't even know how much the machine is going to charge me.

 

your being robbed. You could have gotten an new motor for what your going to spend. You need to adjust the valves on a first gen ONLY every 30k. The manual was wrong and said every 90k, so they extended a factory warranty on them, but you have already ruined all chances with that touching it already. This would have been an opertune time to put a b16 head on and do a vtec conversion.

 

Find out on the front of your head if it is stamped p8r or p75. The b20's come with one or the other. If you have the p75 you can get ANY LS integra head and you can usually buy one complete for about 100. I have give them away before. Now if it is the p8r it is a little different but you could still use the p75 and be fine. The p8r has 1mm larger valves..... I KNOW this can be changed for the p75 integra/other b20 head because I have done it. The last option (And obviously the more fun of the 2 options) is to opt for the vtec head swap and then you will be cooking with gas!!! In any case getting raked for 2600 is CRAZY for a head.
For that price you could swap a FRESH built b20 with port n polish and radius valve job and some crower cams with left over cash. Don't know if any of that helps but my advice is to see what head stamp you have then look for the teg head for cheap and find you a local guy that needs some side work. That head swap is about a 3- 4 hr job if changing the timing belt and water pump at the same time (and hopefully they do this).

 

This is know problem and there is actually a service bulletin out that says to replace the entire head assembly.

 

lol this is exactly why I stopped adjusting mine. hoping it burns up soon!

 

well i just got my CRV i noticed it has a B20Z is that stock in there ? its a 2000 CRV 2wd

 

Yes that is the stock motor.

 

actually Honda DID speak up, in the form of a service bulletin addressing this very problem. I have personally replaced five CR-V heads for this problem at the dealership I work for. It is up to the individual dealer to inform the customer of this problem and get it taken care of at little or no cost to the customer. each one that I did was at NO cost to the customer. Honda paid for it all.

Sad to say but there are some dealers that will deliberately withhold information like that from the customer or are just too lazy to look for info like that when it's kind of important to actually fixing the problem and making the customer happy. In your case you could have talked to your area Honda Service Rep and maybe got Honda to split the cost with you since there was already a lodged complaint on record. but since you already have the head off you are on your own at this point. sorry...