Valve clearance question.
Thread Starter
Racer
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 359
Likes: 0
Valve clearance question.
I'm trying to help out a guy with valve clearance on a solid lifter engine on another forum. His engine is noisy and when he checked his clearance on the noisy cylinders, he has .030". That does sound excessive to me, but my Trans Am runs hydraulics, so I don't know what it should be. I'm not sure if he has a big block or a small block. He asked the question a week or so ago, and no one else has responded. I don't want ot give him bad info. I ran a search on the FAQ section of this forum and found no matches to my question.
Race Director
Joined: Dec 1999
Posts: 19,610
Likes: 778
From: Forked River NJ
He needs to find out what the cam manufacter recomends. All solid cams area little different. That being said .030 is not unreasonable. Mine is .022 for both intake and exhaust. Find out what cam he has and you can find out more about what lash he should be running.
Tech Contributor
Joined: Aug 1999
Posts: 14,379
Likes: 6,390
From: At my Bar drinking and wrenching in Lafayette Colorado
Modern solid cam grinds run pretty tight lash - much tighter than the old '60s solid cam specs. I'm not aware of any modern grinds that run .030" lash (even solid cams for blower applications run .028" or tighter) - .030 will certainly create a bit of noise. The "loose lash" grinds usually run around .022" intake/.024" exhaust (some run as much as .026), and the "tight lash" designs run in the range of .018/.020, some being as tight as .014". If you check the lash after the engine has warmed up (to make sure that everything has "grown" and expanded), I wouldn't hesitate to set it up at .020/.022 regardless of the cam manufacturer. That would be a very safe spec and should run the engine pretty quiet. For some representative lash specs, you can pull up the CompCams Cam catalog on-line and go to the Chevy section: They list the lash for all their cams right there with the cam specs.
Thread Starter
Racer
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 359
Likes: 0
Thanks Lars, I quoted Gordon's answer to the guy and I guess he contacted his cam grinder/manufacturer. He replied that he was told to set them at .014" intake, and .016" exhaust which is right in the ballpark of what you reccomended. Thanks for the help guys.
