Help setting valves on a 225

OK, just to muddy the waters... :-D

There is a third way to set the valves on the slant. It takes advantage of whatever lash ramp you happen to have purchased in your particular path to power, economy, stock running or whatever.


Always set them cold with the 120 degree method. set about .001" loose.

Fire up and warm up like always. Now this is the fun part. Most cam manufacturers stab some pretty arbitrary lash figures at you. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

Loosen the first valve until it starts to develop the louder "Tack" sound of a too loose valve. Measure that valve's clearance. Now tighten it a couple of thousandths. Repeat till all done with all the valves. You'll be able to hear the valves a bit, but you won't have idle misses.

This really helps with performance or strange grind cams. I had to do it with my Erson RV15M-Dutra-RDP cam. I ended up gobs looser than the spec Erson shipped with the cam, but it runs right. I give up a tiny bit of lift that likely doesn't make any difference when the tiny ports of our 170 cubic inch derived head are taken into account. Without serious yet careful work on those ports, high lift doesn't get us very far.

So there you have it. The large diameter of the lifter allows us to adjust to our lash ramps pretty easily with no adverse effects.

3-1/2 cents.

So there! :lol:

CJ