OK,

Thanks for joining me on this subject first of all.

I have been dealing with cars my whole life, I'm not a full time mechanic but I am not an amateur either. I've built a few engines and fixed quite a few

CAR: 1999 Prelude Base with STOCK 1998 JDM H22 5spd

THE LOWDOWN:

Bought a Prelude for a ridiculous price---ran like total ***---blown head gasket and the head sounded horrible ticky/knocky. Figured Head decked, head gasket, Valve Adjustment maybe LMA'S and back in business.... wrong.

I did all the above mentioned work including the LMA's only to find my head still has a knocking sound, sounds like valves. IT IS NOT A TICK, AND IT IS NOT A ROD, MAIN, OR ANYTHING IN THE BLOCK--- IT IS IN THE HEAD. I took an auto stethoscope and it is def louder of a knock on the exhaust side of the head. The block and oil pan sounds BEAUTIFUL.

The head looked pretty decent underneath, I expected maybe a bent valve because it had a BRAND NEW timing belt and tensioner on it and it ran so loud... kinda figured somebody messed up and ditched the car for cheap. None of the valves were bent... not even a little* The cams and rockers had VERY minor wear, compared to most they were nice.

So at this point I think its either massively worn valve guides due to overheating (blown head gasket previously) or tons of valves sticking. I plan to run a vacuum guage on it tonight to see if I can find anything.

And I am totally kicking myself in the *** for not just getting a valve job done from the get-go because the thing runs awesome aside from the minor knocky noise at idle. Sound either disappears or is overshadowed at 2k+ rpms. I really just don't want to rip it apart again.

I have read numerous threads on this problem with this engine, but no one ever comes back to explain the fix. Anyone been through this?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

what did you set valve lash to?

 

In .006-.007
Ex .007-.008

It is not the "ticking" associated with valve lash.

I have triple checked them they are on.