I was just wondering because mine is REALLY noisy. It rattles and taps and whatnot... I just adjusted my valves about 4k miles ago so it's not the valves.. After it warms up it quiets down a good bit...(it's still not quiet by any means but i guess that's solid lifters for ya) I have an H23 by the way... anyone else's engine noisy when you first start it??

 

what do you have done to the car? mine is quiet, i can hear the engine but that is all. nothing i would worry about. but all i have is an intake and exhaust.

 

mine's making a knocking noise.. we at first thought it was in the bottom end.. but using a peice of pipe we've pinpointed it to the cam area on the pass side (in around the distributor area of the head). We're thinking it's something with the cam to distributor connection or a bearing in the area

 

ive got an h22 and its super loud. all i have is intake and exhuast. it makes this annoying squeaking noise and whenever i go to the honda dealer ship, it stops. arg!

 

yep, that's right. h22 is kind of loud. valvetrain is tapping when cold (it's not the matter of valve adjustment). What can be heard are injectors even if the engine is warmed (and I don;t know if it is a sign that something goes wrong).

 

setting the intake and exhaust specs when doing a valve adjustment .001 to .002 tighter will help quiet things down...hondas are quite loud comparably right off the showroom floor...

 

I don't have any engine mods yet... so it's nothing I did... I have exhaust and my suspension setup is sitting in my basement. Mine makes a funny rattling noise at like 1500 rpm when it's cold. I also has a little knock at idle... sometimes its louder than others. I'm not sure what it is. I can't imagine it being a rod... the car only has 70k miles on it and I'm the 2nd owner.. and I've hit rev limiter once. The guy that had it before me was in his upper 20's with 2 kids... and never did anything to it other than get it serviced and drive it to work. I thought one of the noises was my distributor bearing going... but i replaced the distributor and it didn't make any difference... so it's something in the valve train on the passenger side... it sounds like maybe a loose lifter on the exhaust side...?? Sometimes it taps a weird tap noise.. then goes away.. it has like 3 different tapping noises... none of them are detonation... Grr... I don't know... It still runs fine. Anyone else have any input or funny noises that their car makes?

 

mine is loud as ****!!!! but then again my idle tables on my AEM EMS need to be adjusted so it idles high anyways, and the head is ported, with some some high lift cams, and exhuast coming pretty much straight outta tha downpipe....

 

Mine is a blown, loud, angry beast.

 

My h23 has 37K on it, basically stock and its pretty noisy until it's warmed up.
A friend of mine told me that all DOHC honda motors do that.

https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=425737

this may explain a little better.

 

ooooh.....i want FI..
mines just loud..mainly cuz of a free flowing exhaust...with a itty bitty exhaust leak

 

All i can hear is my freakin exhaust...its so bass filled when its cold.

 

that taping noise is that normal cuas emine does that some domestic guy goes ah man u got lifter tap going on my 350 did that before it blew, pls tell me my motors fine cuase its always taped like that i thought thats how the dohc sounded too.

 

"tapping" should be fine... 4 cyl's do it alot, and it's received the name "4 cylinder tap" because of that

 

ok thx for the info

 

I bet you mine is the loudest

 

 

maybe we should test this theory of yours...

 

so how would i adjust the valves if i wanted to quiet down my car? i have a feeling it's not an easy task.

 

Some of the noise could be the lost motion assemblies. Mine were worn and wouldn't push down smoothly. Replacing the LMAs helpped a lot in terms of noise from the engine when it was cold. When you adjust the valves you can check the LMAs by pushing down the middle rocker arms with your fingers. They should compress smoothly and return all the way up until the rocker arm is against the cam. If they stick some, you will get some extra noise from the middle rocker arm bouncing off the cam. I don't think it really hurts anything if the LMAs are a little sticky. I think 5g LMAs are basically just a spring, so they may not have this problem. Can anyone confirm this?

 

what are you running for oil, those OHC's love 5w when you start them up

 

I'm running Amsoil 10w-30. Can anyone tell me more or back up the statement about the lost motion assemblies?? That might be something I'll check out.

And adjusting your valves is easy.. get yourself a helms manual... a set of feeler guages.. and a few common tools and you're set. You might as well replace the valve cover gasket, spark plug grommets, and the little washers that go on top of the bolts that hold down the valve cover. You can get it all in a set for $30-$40 at any auto parts store. Do take notice though that the bolts that hold the valve cover on only torque to 7 ft. lbs. They are very easy to strip.

Anyone else have noises??

 

yeah mine taps hella loud....even when its warmed up....its a constant TAP..TAP..TAP..TAP..TAP..TAP..TAP..TAP..TAP..TAP.. TAP..TAP..

but again i have stainless steel valves and forged pistons.....