Got the car on jackstands, valve covers are off, I'm turning the engine and rocking the valves per instructions from a forum search. All is well.

Except I can't reach the valves. There's engine tin above, heat exchanger below, and suspension mount to the side. OK, I'm exagerating a little. I can reach the rockers, I can even get the feeler gage in and out. What I can't see how to do is get tools in there to do the adjustment. I might be able to get a wrench on the lock nut and get it loose, but I don't see how I could get it tight enough after I've made the adjustment. I definately don't see how I could hold the adjustment screw and tighten the nut simultaneously.

Am I missing something, or should I be recruiting the help of my 4-year-old-daughter? Her hands are pretty small.

Mike

A feeler gauge, short screwdriver, wrench and patience....
I'll usually leave the feeler gauge in place, tighten the nut with the wrench and prevent the screw from turning with the screwdriver.
After the nut is tightened, make sure you maintained your .006" (or whatever it is for your engine) adjustment, then remove the feeler gauge.
Hopefully that helps, the first couple times are pretty frustrating; but once you've figured out a routine it goes pretty smoothly.
Mike

I use a stubby flat-head screwdriver. I also use a ratcheting offset screwdriver I picked up from Sears. Something like this.

For the jam-nuts, I use a deep offset box end wrench to make sure I can clear the other adjusting lugs when loosening or tightening the nuts. Something like this, but obviously a different size.

I find that for some valves, I have to reach the cover from the back, lying my arm along the heat exchanger. Some of them I can stick the screwdriver in from the outside, and some I have to reach in from the front side of the engine. It can be a chore, but it's easier if the rear wheel is off the car.

--DD

I wondered the same thing when I did my first one as an apprentice at a dealership, 37 years ago. I use a screwdriver with a 1/4 inch tip and a 12-15 inch shaft. You have to come in at an angle on some adjusters, but it really works well. It was much easier at the school, but the engines were on stands ..................

The Cap'n

I use a 54 year old grumpy mechanic. Easy as pie and have yet to get my hands dirty.

OK, I tried to do this the fast way and it didn't work worth a darn. If you go to the Pelican tech article you will be sure to be in the right place when your adjusting the valves. The big thing for me was to triple check the clearance after doing the adjustment. Problem is, when you tighten the jam nut it changes the clearance. I got to the point where I wouldn't move on until I was satisfied that the clearance was absolutely correct. The first time I did this I was amazed at how well it worked. Valve noise was pretty much zero. Before, I ended up with tight and loose valves. That's a bad thing. You have to watch the distributor rotor and mark the flywheel to do it right. Once you do this and be totally anal about the final clearance you got it and really it isn't that difficult. I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the Pelican article because I was trying to correlate the crank to cam ratio and it just wasn't working. Fact is when I gave in and just went with it, it worked out fine. Take your time, mark your flywheel and you'll be good to go. Oh, and by the way it is really tight in there, so I would take the aforementioned advice on the tools. Good Luck!

I am not going to disagree with the masters on this board, but I think that every few thousand miles I would want to check/clean my heat exchangers and exhaust system. Once they are removed, you have plenty of room to adjust valves, check for leaks, clean, free up exhaust header nuts, clean and paint warm air guides, check/clean thermostat, etc., anything you can think of - maybe the best look you'll get at your engine without dropping it. Come to think of it, that's probably an even better way!

Never mind all that, go ahead and get a trained monkey - you know you want to!

Besides making it expensive for us CSOB's to have to replace those copper heat exchanger nuts and copper gaskets every time the heat exchangers are reinstalled, those of us who have found stripped exhaust studs (and fixed them) really aren't in to removing the heat exchangers unless it's absolutely necessary. For me, a valve adjustment doesn't qualify.

Agreed, I guess - taking the exhaust headers off isn't going to give you any extra room anyway, and you don't need them off to pull the HEs - but if you keep the header nuts free and clean, you may never ruin an exhaust stud. And I would certainly take a hard look at HEs- not a good place to ignore rust, even if I did have to pop for a couple of $3 gaskets two or three times a year.

More to the point, if you're new to the car, and to adjusting the valves, it might be worth taking a little extra time to take a good long look at everything you can - you'll be back!

Almost every valve adjuster screw on every Type IV 914 I've ever owned could be turned by hand (fingers, no screwdriver) once the lock nut is loosened. I keep a stubby handy, but I don't have to use it. Am I the only one? Can't be...

I remember my first time. It's difficult when thinking about it, but once you get in there and do it that first time and establish a process that works for you for the entire procedure, it's easy after that. It looks difficult, but in reality it isn't.

There's no way I'm pulling the exhaust every time I do a valve adjustment.

Sorry, Dude, but the problems you had are OPERATOR ERROR If you do it the way I've described in the classic thread, you DO NOT have to know what cylinder you're on. The distributor is so irrelevant, it can be lying on the bench. As for the screws moving when you tighten the nuts, you're supposed to tighten the jam nuts while the feeler gauge is in place and the screwdriver is still on the screw.

The Cap'n

If you have ever tightened a valve adjuster nut on an aircooled engine where you can see it, you will notice that the adjuster screw usually rotates unless the screw driver is in place.

I haven't needed to use a screw driver to adjust mine on any of my aircooled cars. I do need it to lock the jam nut though.

True. I check and set the clearance and then give my nuts a tighten and observe how much the screw turns. Then I loosen the nut again and turn the screw back that much extra distance and then tighten it down. Afterwords I recheck the clearance. If it's not right, repeat the previous procedure. Done. Still, only on rare occasions do I need to actually use a screwdriver.

Yea, but doesn't that get expensive flying Cap'n Krusty back 'n forth from California?

I used the Pelican method for the first year, with very unsatisfactory valve noise. I finally broke down and started to use the Cap'n method, and my valves are almost silent. Once I did it a few times, it really speeded up the entire process.

As said in the early posts, the first few times are really a pain. But once you do this every couple of moonths, it beomes a pretty trivial exercise.

Eric Read

Dime is a great screwdriver because you can better see how much the screw turns when tightening the locknut for the first time.

Also it's only a couple of minutes to remove the heater elbow and 'stuff' that attaches to the heat exchange. Opens up the area at least 50%. And get a monkey.

Do it the Cap'ns way. Hardest part is crawling my old tired body under the car and back out.

Looks like I'll be trying the Cap'ns way the next time I do the valves.

So there's no magic trick. Offset wrenches might help, so I'll look into that. Dropping the heat exchangers is not worth the effort. I'll just remember: Patience, patience, patience.

Thanks a lot!

Mike

Yup,

I started doing the valve adjust the same way as the Captain back in the 70's.

It's a bit of a pain going back and forth -rotating the engine and looking at a valve on one side until it goes full in, and then moving to the other side of the engine and adjusting the exact opposite valve.

But, can't argue with results. Got 200,000 on my Superbeetle engine with valve adjusts and oil changes.

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