Hey everyone! I need help!! I searched the forums and found a lot of related threads but not one that deals with my specific situation so any help is super appreciated! My wife has a 1999 Acura Integra with a B19B1 engine in it that has been parked in the garage for a couple years now. With the Covid situation I figured it was as good a time as any to tackle an oil leak issue and decided to essentially rebuild the entire top end. During disassembly I found a bent valve which kinda made sense because the timing belt was super worn out and loose. So I decided to just have all new valves installed. Sent the head to a machine shop where they ran the entire gambit including the new valves and all the grinding/seating/seals for the valves. Problem I'm running into is now that I have the head back and installed on the engine I'm setting the lash; exhaust was fine, set them all to .007" double triple checked. Installed the intake cam and I have zero clearance between the rockers and cam lobes. I've bottomed out the adjustments so there isn't any further to go and there are 2 out of the 8 that have some clearance but the others are making contact the entire time (yes, I rotated the cam so it was on the base circle for each one). I thought maybe I over-torqued the cam caps so I took them all off in reverse order and checked my torque wrench (86 in-lbs) and followed the correct torque sequence and tried again with the same result.

Has anyone seen this before or know what my next move should be? Prior to parking it two years ago it ran fine without issue (even though these gremlins were hiding inside lol) just an oil leak. Again any help is appreciated and thanks in advance!!

P.S. I've never posted in a forum before so if I did this incorrectly I apologize as well!

 

You have one of two (or maybe both) possible problems with this head: First, the replacement valves are slightly longer than the original valves and/or Second, the machine shop cut the intake valve seats too deep and the valves are sitting up proud through the head... and thus, taking up all of the lash space normally available for adjustment. Pull the head back off and check it out... and prepare to have a discussion with the machine shop.

I have seen this many times before... as a matter of fact, I have a JDM H23A engine with this problem being assembled right now. It came from Japan with a trashed head... and worse yet, the Japanese machine shop (or previous owner) ground down all eight of the Intake lash tappet screws so that it would have some clearance - just so it would pass a compression test required by the Importer.

 

Thanks JR! That is what I figured but was holding onto hope that maybe I'd missed something simple or a trick I wasn't privy to lol. The shop did say they were longer than the original ones but they had ground them down to the proper height. Seems like there is something on their end that needs worked out. I'll take it back on Monday (they're closed on the weekend) and report back what they find. Thanks for the quick reply!