Well, it's been a long night.... I got home at 6:30pm and let the car cool down for a few hours (apparently that's not long enough since the engine was still pretty warm). After my first attempt at doing the valve adjustment (Sunday), the engine started (yeay!) but there was some pretty bad valve tapping. So finally I found some time today to try it over again. I couldn't wait any longer cause the tapping was driving me nuts! I opened the valve cover and had a fan on it the whole time to cool it down. Without a valve adjusting tool, and flying solo, I managed to do it in 45min.

After taking into consideration all the advice that you guys gave me... the final result is...

... she puuurrrrrs like a kitten.

Just wanna thank all you guys for your help! eBeers on me.

 

Great job What did you do this time that were different from the last time?

 

so what'd you do differently this time around? did you not adjust them to specs the first time?

 

I think the 2 main things I did wrong on Sunday were:

1) incorrect gapping (too big)
2) turned the crankshaft the wrong way at times

Since it was my first time at the valve adjustment on Sunday, I wasn't sure what "slight drag" meant. LostGsr advised me to make sure that when doing the exhaust valves, be sure the .007 gauge fits, but not .008 gauge. For the intake, 0.006 should fit but not the .007. It turns out that pretty much all 16 valves had too much spacing between!!

Secondly, on Sunday, I turned the crankshaft CCW (the correct way), but when I over-turned... I'd turn it back CW (don't know how big of an impact that makes).

So steering clear of those things, I managed to do it properly this time.

Now, if I could only think of my next project.... advance my timing without a timing gun?