Valve clearances

[barkerwilliams]

I am in the process of refurbishing a MK2 Stag with about 50,000 verified miles on the clock. Car has done very few miles over last 15 years. I have run the car for the grand total of 15 miles when I bought it last year and all seemed well. Today I checked the valve clearances and all inlet and exhaust read too small, mostly by 4 to 5 thou.

I had expected a couple of valves might be off, or even the exhaust showing valve seat wear but not every valve. In desperation I went over my feeler gauges with a micrometer and they are all accurate.
So is it my technique? I measured with lobe of cam pointing directly away from valve.

Are these reading to be expected with an engine that has not been run for some time and perhaps needs a little running to free things up? I would expect a sticking valve or pallet would create too large a gap.

Alan

[Lingen]

Alan.
If this is the first time you have set, or checked the valve clearances, and they are all around 5 thou out, then I would assume that whoever last did them either deliberately set them all to small, or had some dodgy feeler gauges. As you say, not having run it for a while, if it had any effect at all, might possible make the gaps too large.
You seem to be doing everything correctly, so if it were mine, I would now just set them all to the correct clearances and leave it at that..
Mike.

[Phil S]

If you do not know when they were last set correctly it could have had years of use.
reset to correct gaps.
Phil

[Mark Serj]

Don't worry Alan, just reset as other posts and you can always monitor from there at regular intervals

[Bandit1200]

When I recently changed head gasket, I took the opportunity of checking the valve clearances most of which seemed too tight.
Being very methodical, I produced a spreadsheet showing actual clearances per valve and calculated the required shim to achieve the specified clearance for both inlet and exhaust valves.
After refitting the head with re-shimmed valves the top end now sounds like a fight in a cutlery drawer and I wish I'd left well alone

[mole42]

Writing from my experience of the world war in a cutlery drawer and my attempt to calm it, I’’d say that a spreadsheet is the way to go (it’s what I did) but then you need to adjust for wear in the valve stems, shims and buckets. That means re-measuring the clearances three times and placing appropriate shims.
good luck, we’’re all counting on you.