Club 80-90 Forums

Further to my discovery that my 1.9 df has solid followers fitted and adjusting the tappets the engine has much improved performance but still has one annoying tappet. i noticed when going over the tappets once again just to check I hadn't missed something that one of the adjuster screws on no 2 cylinder needed screwing in quite a bit more than any of the others.

is this a worn follower, push rod or the screw or possibly the cam lobe ?

I read in wiki earlier on how to extract the push rod and follower with the head on. is this practical in this case or am I missing something ?

YOU can see if the screw is worn by comparing with the others, It could be a valve seat slipping out? Or just that that one was r further out of adjustment to start with. Keep an eye on it and re check after some more miles.

Thanks for that 123-jn I will check it tomorrow since I've done 140 miles in the last two days .hope its just the screw.

Usually it's the top of the valve stem that gets hammered to make the valve length short.
Premature wear of this type is caused by mal adjusted gaps and the use of synthetic oil that contains no ZDDT additives for flat tappet types.

I've not had chance to have a look at the tappet screws today but if what you say is correct does it mean new valves kev,or can it be adjusted. since owning the van I've only used 15/40 mineral oil and have done two oil changes in 4000 miles as the first oil change I did was very black and wanted to make sure I had flushed all the rubbish out.

The tappets were quite a way out and sounded like a bag of spanners, apart from the one tappet that's noisy now albeit not as bad as it was the engine is running much better and with more power.

as long as you can achieve the required gap then the valve is ok.

Managed to quieten down the last tappet and now the engine sounds much better. Thanks people for the advice.